


Eclipsed

by spidermilk



Category: Fazbear Frights - Fandom, Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Betrayal, Crime Scenes, F/F, Five Nights at Freddy's References, Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator | Five Nights at Freddy's 6, Gen, Homoeroticism, Human Experimentation, Kidnapping, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Original Character(s), Possessed Animatronics (Five Nights at Freddy's), Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:00:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29328930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spidermilk/pseuds/spidermilk
Summary: Set post-FNAF 3, some months after the burn down, roughly in the year 2024 at the FNAF 6 location. This story mainly takes place a few years later in 2027.•Henry’s plan to end things in FNAF 6 fails. The restaurant succeeds tremendously due to a competent owner, who later hires a whole team of staff.While he keeps things afloat, one of his new hires finds herself in the midst of unimaginable chaos. She’s young, proactive, and eager to help, but when she learns of things she shouldn’t, how will she cope— let alone survive?
Relationships: Sarah (Five Nights at Freddy’s)/Original Character(s), Scrap Baby (Five Nights at Freddy's)/Original Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	1. Previously On...

**Author's Note:**

> e·clipse  
> /əˈklips/  
> verb  
> past tense: eclipsed; past participle: eclipsed
> 
> deprive (someone or something) of significance, power, or prominence
> 
> •
> 
> Disclaimer, if it matters, but at least half of these characters don’t belong to me. I can only claim the main character and a handful of side OCs.
> 
> Also, this first chapter is a bit wordy. I was actually writing this while I was making a virtual build of the restaurant, so I needed a lot of description. I won’t be hurt if you decide to skim parts of this.

Fazbear Entertainment, a company with a long history of bad press and so-called ‘sketchy’ practices, was very close to tanking. It was 2024, and their business was so slow that they’d had to resort to dropping the prices of much of their plush and toy lines. It didn’t help very much; their stores were soon out of stock and leaving customers demanding more. 

So, in typical Fazbear fashion, another location opened up to the public. Uniquely, it wasn’t built from scratch— it was a renovated building, with an odd design and not much flair at all. 

...At _first_. 

As this restaurant developed with little to no change, a man by the name of Jeff Wren was brought into the company. He was a businessman, an investor— not _excessively_ rich, but quite smart and ambitious. He was the leader-type Fazbear Entertainment sorely needed. 

Jeff was keen on turning this all around, being the one who broke the chain of failure. It certainly helped that the man was popular with the locals of Hurricane— within days of running the place, he’d already polished it up with the help of friends and extended family, who also doubled as the restaurant’s first customers. They were his advantage: a head-start. 

Freddy’s became a business hotspot in a few short days. Kids, teens, and families alike seemed to flock to the place, and soon enough, the word was out that Freddy’s had made a comeback. 

Jeff’s good reputation was their saving grace. Even the most skeptical customers soon turned loyal. His quality control was impeccable, his demeanor was amiable, and his team was hard-working. 

His profits grew so much that by the fifth day of Freddy’s being open, Fazbear Entertainment had sent two representatives down to appraise it themselves. Naturally, they liked what they found. Jeff’s new location had all but revived the company; it was their biggest success at the time. A godsend. They just couldn’t ignore how good this was. 

Afterwards, with the help of his now-parent company, Jeff was granted access to better resources, permission to advertise certain products, and the funding for not only better attractions, but better food, better maintenance, and better service in general. Not one online review was outright negative. 

And so, with this newest location, which was quickly growing in popularity among children and their families alike, the latest animatronics— the Rockstars, Melodies and friends— were functioning exactly as they should. Careful testing and maintenance of the robots meant that there was virtually no risk of an accident, and even if one did occur, it would most certainly not be fatal. 

A major improvement, in fact, in the safety of these new robots was a change in their motors that meant a much lighter weight and a weaker ‘bite’ force, so if your hand was stuck in Rockstar Chica’s toothy beak, she couldn’t even nip you hard enough to get your arm stuck. 

The only drawback to this change was that the Rockstars seemed to have a harder time maneuvering; their balance was just slightly off, especially Foxy, who sported a peg leg. This led to the oddly charming result of them having cartoonish walk patterns, almost seeming to stomp around as if trying to seem heavier than they were. Chica even bunched her yellow hands into fists when she wasn’t holding her maracas, adding on to her charm as a quirky Southern character. 

Foxy was the only Rockstar to have his own individual room in addition to a stage. It was the truest version, in many people’s opinions, of “Pirate’s Cove” that there could be: A separate room, dark and painted to look like the bottom of the sea, a wooden platform in the center, like the plank of a ship, where Rockstar Foxy stood surrounded by a thin wall of blue-tinted glass. On the walls outside of Foxy’s chamber, long “fish tanks” lined the split paths on either side of him, soft-looking synthetic seagrass billowing in the current made by the filters. Tropical fish and striped eels were painted onto the wall behind the glass. 

Past Foxy, the paths combined back briefly into one. This was the entrance to the “Pirate’s Cove Caves”, which was a maze where you could find either a prize or your own “watery grave” depending on where you ended up. Sometimes, for events like birthday parties, Rockstar Foxy himself would be put into the maze to pursue players to add an extra challenge. Kids absolutely loved it, and parents loved that it kept their kids busy and soundproofed for at least a good thirty minutes. 

Every week, the restaurant would switch up which animatronics were featured on the main stage. Originally, they had just been switching out the “guest star” stage, but it was clear that the children preferred to see more characters more often, so they changed accordingly. The Rockstars would feature Foxy along with his companions instead of in his cove, usually with one of the side characters on the guest stage, like Lefty, who was an inexplicably popular character. 

Lefty was missing an eye, was prone to audio and motion errors, and was frankly a little creepy— but somehow, he was one of the most requested “guests” at this location. Unlike most of the other brand-new animatronics, his motors hadn’t been switched out, meaning that he was an actual liability until that was changed. 

Unfortunately, the mechanic who had switched the others had not picked up any calls for months, so the staff just doubled up whenever Lefty was on stage in case anything went wrong. Generally, the only malfunction he ever exhibited was a spastic shaking that ended almost always after less than a minute after it had started. The loud metal clang of his jaw was still jarring, though, so the staff just cranked up the main stage music and dimmed Lefty’s lights when this happened, keeping people away until it had passed. Luckily, Lefty’s feet were magnetically attached to the floor whenever he was onstage, so there was virtually no risk of him accidentally stumbling forward and potentially causing any sort of accident. 

Still— it was a miracle nothing of note had occurred yet. Kids were unpredictable, bold, and prone to accidents even without the presence of a faulty animatronic. It was a stress on staff whenever he was out. As a result, his stage time was limited under the premise that he was a “big star” and had a “busy schedule.” 

A unique feature of this particular location was its complexity. Unlike previous Freddy’s locations, this building did not follow the typical architectural plan that most others did. Yes, the key elements such as the main dining area and party rooms were there, but the way the facility was arranged was certainly one-of-a-kind. Rockstar Foxy’s Pirate’s Cove was already the most complex it had ever been, and Rockstar Bonnie had his own private room as well, a backstage area made to look fit for a celebrity, complete with his very own miniature ‘stage’ fit for a true rock-star. Rockstar Chica, who got along well with kids because of her humor and attitude, spent her off-stage time in the pizzeria’s open-faced kitchen, sometimes giving basic food safety lessons and inviting kids to practice good kitchen habits. 

Interestingly enough, Rockstar Freddy himself didn’t have his own designated space besides his place on the stage. It seemed to fit his character, though— an eager, enthusiastic bear who liked climbing the financial ladder perhaps a little too much was certainly not out of place at the center of attention. At night, staff left him in his designated spot onstage, since keeping him near Bonnie backstage had since proved to be less than ideal; Freddy seemed to value his space, and Bonnie almost seemed to resent having to share it as well. 

Of course, being robots, these were just silly ways of describing behaviors that the staff couldn’t exactly explain. There was a certain comfort in personifying the animatronics— especially since they looked so eerie in the dark.  
It was a miracle that children flocked to them the way that they did, although it was noted that many children were reportedly spooked by Foxy’s Cove area, namely when Foxy himself was activated and sent into the maze to pursue them. 

All in all, over the generally uneventful few years the place had been open, the restaurant had gained popularity rather quickly. Despite Fazbear Entertainment’s murky, tainted history, it was apparently still a desirable place to come to. It helped that the owner was friendly and talkative, never turning away a news reporter or a question. His candidness had led to the most successful Freddy’s restaurant to date. They were constantly expanding and adding new products, play areas, and games, even bringing in more animatronic characters as time went on. 

The restaurant was even offered access to an exclusive Funtime animatronic, Funtime Chica, designed originally by Afton Robotics. Chica had previously belonged exclusively to the aforementioned company, but since its decline and eventual shutdown, she had had no other use to her creators other than to collect dust. 

When the news of her future arrival had gotten out, business had nearly doubled. Kids were ecstatic to see the advanced animatronic in action, and some of the parents had expressed a keen interest in the character as well, marveling at her pristine complexity. Even the staff were excited. If Chica was already attracting this much attention before she’d even arrived, then her actual arrival would certainly boost their success. 

There were a few things, despite the restaurant’s overall success, however, that the owner deemed as missed opportunities. Several discarded, inactive animatronics had shown up in the first few weeks the place had been open, no sign of how they’d gotten there or who could have possibly left them. 

Oddly enough, this is the same way that they had come to have ‘Lefty’ in their possession. He’d been the least broken one of the the bunch, and also the first— so of course the owner had taken him in and cleaned him up. He’d figured the bear had been left for him like Funtime Chica had, although it had been odd to discover the huge animatronic left unattended in the back alley. 

Initially, the owner had wanted to dismantle the others; it was the safest way to use them for parts, but he quickly discovered that the things still had had a bit of ‘fight’ left in them— they would move when he wasn’t looking, somehow not making a sound, always inching closer as if to threaten his personal space. 

He wasn’t a gambling man. He put them away, as he was advised to do by Fazbear Entertainment themselves. It was a no-brainer. 

The robots were contained and sealed in storage, because he had hope for their use, but he wasn’t quite willing to risk his own safety until he at least had a mechanic or two who knew what they were doing around the things. Managing Lefty was already strain enough on the staff. 

Over the years, various employees had inquired about the old robots, of course. Some wondered why he kept them at all, while others had ambitious plans for utilizing their parts. They were all given the same answer: mind your business. It was one of the rare times the owner wasn’t happy to discuss a subject. 

And he didn’t have to feel guilty about it, either. What he was doing was being cautious. Perhaps overly so, but with Fazbear Entertainment’s history, he wasn’t going to fall into that same destructive, reckless pattern. He took great pride in his business’s success and he loathed to think what horrible accidents might occur should he risk jeopardizing that. 

Eventually, anyway, people knew to stop asking. The owner had a reliable staff and was content with all of them, and it was an understood rule that the old animatronics were off-limits for the foreseeable future. 

It should be noted, despite this, that since the subject had not been breached for at least a good half a year, it had quite nearly been forgotten about. 

And why wouldn’t it be? It wasn’t exactly a pressing matter. The old things hadn’t caused any trouble in all of their time in that room, all of those years the place was open. 

The only major incident, in fact, had been an attempt at arson by some random suspect— the fire had only lasted a small while; the newly-installed sprinkler system and security’s quick action with the extinguisher had stopped the flames in the place where they’d started. Frustratingly, they’d never found the guy, but it appeared that he hadn’t bothered to try again.  
Besides, when that had happened, the place hadn’t been nearly this popular. Now it was a hub of activity most days of the week, and more staff stayed late hours finishing their daily tasks and doubling-checking their work. If the guy had been that malicious, he might have kept trying no matter how many innocents he put at risk.

Against all odds, Freddy’s was doing better than it ever had. By some miracle, their media coverage didn’t over-blow every little rumor— of which there were precious little —and the owner had high hopes of expanding on his establishment. Maybe he’d get the rights to the company. He was the sole Freddy’s to be operating now anyway, the only thing keeping the company alive, at this point. He was a decent man, and very humble, but he thought he at least deserved some credit. 

Lately, he had been particularly fond of taking his meal breaks in the public dining areas with all of the other customers. He was proud of the ambience in the place, proud of the excitement, proud of the casual, cheery banter between parents as they chatted with one another. 

Come December, business was good, and Freddy’s had been abuzz with holiday cheer of various kinds. It was the owner’s favorite month of the year, and he imagined the same for many of the kids who frequented there. His regulars, a few middle and upper-class families who lived close by, never failed to show up for the week of Christmas (and Hanukkah, for one of them). 

They were almost like his extended family. His parents had long ago passed, and being an only child had its lonelier moments, although his wife Dolores was the brightest light he’d ever known. He was still immensely glad for the company of his customers.

As one would expect, though, there were bittersweet moments here and there. Letting go of a loyal employee, for example, had saddened him for a good couple of weeks last month. 

He had never felt so terrible about doing so before— the former staff-member in question had simply been too old to work anymore, and though he still lived nearby, the owner hardly saw him nowadays. 

Well. At least the old man had retired. Hopefully he was doing fine. 

But now that left the owner with a new challenge: finding a replacement. 

Though his staff was competent and more than prepared to cover for their lost coworker, he knew it would be a strain on them, especially since the man had been let go just as Lefty had made his first appearance of the week. 

The position was fairly common— it was a blend of custodian and waiter, a job that required regular interaction with customers and often later hours to tidy up afterwards, double check locks, turn off appliances, et cetera. It paid quite nicely as well. 

So far, the owner had received only two applications for the position, both equally ordinary... which was fine. He liked ordinary. 

Firstly, there was the older applicant, Shelley, a 37-year old mother of two, who was married. From her Facebook profile, she liked to laugh. She seemed generally jovial, but persistent and serious enough to commit to this job. Her interview had been brief and pleasant. 

Secondly, there was the younger applicant, Louise. 

Only 19, she was soon to start her first year at a local college, and had made the high school honor roll with near-perfect grades throughout. Despite her academic prowess, though, Louise had been humble and kind in her interview, much more down-to-earth than the owner had admittedly assumed she’d be. 

She was much younger than Shelley, but she had a wisdom about her that the restaurant owner valued. He definitely wasn’t going to have an easy time of telling Shelley that he wouldn’t be hiring her. It made sense to have a young person around— it made the kids feel more at home at Freddy’s, he knew it. 

Yes. He would have to make that phone call before the end of the day. Best to get it over with and all. 

Taking a last sip of his drink, the owner stood, empty glass in hand, and headed to his office.


	2. Explusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new hire gets accustomed to her surroundings, and a young man goes for a walk in his neighborhood.

Louise Matthews stood on the very last step of the stairs leading down to the restaurant. In front of her were two glossy wooden doors, and past them was her new job-to-be at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. 

She was practically bouncing on her toes. Already, she could hear the noise from inside: laughter, music, conversations, the clinking of plates, the running of little feet. 

Pushing open the door on the right, she stepped onto the wooden border of the dining area, which surrounded a vast floor of black-and-white tiles. 

The place looked exactly how it sounded: busy. It was close to chaotic, but something about the lack of stress Louise would usually see on parents’ faces at a kid’s restaurant was refreshing. Sure, kids were playing and exploring, but they weren’t wreaking havoc. At every corner of the room, there was something to hold their attention— the arcade games, the food, the party favors at the tables, the playscape in the corner— and, of course, the stage itself. 

When Louise turned her attention to that, she fell in love. Warm, colorful lights illuminated four figures on the larger stage, all moving and singing in sync with one another, their animated gestures lifelike and smooth. On a smaller stage besides them, a lone black bear animatronic performed, its stage lined with tinsel and strings of fir “branches” for the holiday season. Louise wondered if the bear’s missing eye freaked out any of the children, but none of them seemed to care. 

Someone waving in her direction caught her attention. In the opposite corner of the room, Jeff, the owner, was smiling at her. 

Louise had only seen him once before, when she’d met him at the nearby coffee shop for her interview. She found him inviting and thoughtful, for an older man. He was almost fatherly. (Or maybe grandfatherly. She wasn’t sure how old he was.)

Dodging a few giggling children, Louise made her way over to his side of the room. Jeff was wearing a navy blue cardigan and what looked like reading glasses. 

He nodded at her. “Right on time. Come with me.” 

Down a corridor lined with children’s drawings and promotional posters, Louise followed Jeff until he stopped at an open doorway, politely inviting her to go ahead. She did. 

Inside the office, Louise took a seat in one of Jeff’s soft leather chairs, removing the satchel she’d been wearing and setting it in her lap. 

The room, despite being underground like the rest of the restaurant, had a comforting ambience to it. Two walls were almost entirely lined with books and boxes, all neatly filed away on their respective shelves. Jeff’s desk, at the back of the room, had only one lamp, which emitted a soft yellow light and added to the library-sense the room already had. 

There was the faintest smell of nutmeg in the air, which Louise guessed was either an air freshener or a candle. It was a pleasant contrast from the restaurant’s busy air, no matter how much she liked the commotion. 

Louise relaxed into her seat as Jeff stepped behind his desk, adjusting his glasses as he thumbed through a pile of papers on one side. Selecting one, he pulled it from the rest and leaned over, handing it to her. She stood partially to take it. 

It appeared to be a contract. He’d already mentioned this document, so she wasn’t exactly surprised, but it was still nerve-wracking to behold. Fazbear Entertainment’s long drawl about liability was equally dull and unsettling. It was hard to believe that this could be associated with sweet old Jeff. 

To his credit, Jeff had expressed that he had complete faith in his establishment, despite the legal “mumbo-jumbo”, as he’d called it. Louise hadn’t taken that as apathy, either. She could tell that her soon to be manager was an honest man, and probably just wanted to run his business in peace. 

Besides, it wasn’t as if there was some need for shady practices around here. This Freddy’s was wildly popular and successful, perhaps the most successful any of their restaurants had ever been. Louise truly did feel safe here and she hadn’t even been here a full day yet. 

After she’d finished reading and initialing where prompted, she returned the paper to Jeff, who nodded and set it aside. “Thank you, Louise.” He glanced up and smiled, his expression slightly weary, but genuine. “If you’ll come with me again, I’ll show you to the employee lounge. Your new coworkers will show you around from there.” 

The lounge was a mid-size, curved room that connected to the kitchen. A young man sporting dark facial hair and a pair of sunglasses tucked into his shirt pocket was sitting at one of the three tables, poking at his packaged salad with a plastic fork. He gave Louise a little wave as she walked in. She smiled. 

Jeff stopped in the doorway. “Marty, this is Louise. Show her around a little when you’re done, will you?” 

“Sure, Jeff”, said Marty, slightly muffled by the salad. He looked sheepish. Jeff smiled and shook his head, turning away. 

Louise set her bag gently on Marty’s table. “Nice to meet you.” 

“Touché”, said Marty, wiping his fingers briefly on a napkin before extending a hand. “He told you already, but I’m Marty.” 

Louise shook it and gestured towards a wall with several built-in square storage cubbies. “Well, I’m Louise, again. Is there a free one I can use?” 

•••

The disguise shifted as they walked. 

Every step was harder than the last, and the low, agonized whines of their unwilling companion accompanied each tiny movement. His skin was bruised and stretched, and remnants of muscle and organ tissue slid out of place so often that it was a miracle they didn’t just fall out. Sunken, dark eye sockets held glassy, milky white eyes, tinged at the edges with a grayish color. 

Michael, through what seemed like three layers of foggy glass, numbly watched the blurs of white in the sky that he knew to be clouds. He hadn’t had a coherent thought in weeks. He was surprised he was still awake, to be honest. All but a few of his internal organs had been spared by the “scooper”, and even those had been shoved around quite a bit afterwards, as the metal amalgamation had dug its way into his bloodied human shell. 

He had still been bleeding out when it had happened. The process of dying was slow and horrible, all-encompassing... and then the process itself had come to a bizarre standstill. 

Even as Michael had watched his own tissues and fluids spill out onto the cold floor of the scooping room, his nerves had sparked on contact with his killer; it was as if the creature was reanimating him as he slipped away, forcing life back into the ravaged remains of the man it had tricked. 

In a normal situation, the shock and blood loss would have killed him by that point. 

But no— not him. Not Michael. 

The horrible reality of what was happening had dawned upon him as he felt himself begin to twitch, spluttering and gasping in unimaginable pain as he physically felt tubes and wires worming their way between his arteries. The sensation had felt like he’d been dipped, slowly and steadily, into an active volcano, but he couldn’t scream. His throat was clogged. Michael couldn’t even breathe. When his vision didn’t black out from the lack of oxygen, his fear and dread grew, realizing that the metal monstrosity inside of him was the only thing keeping him alive anymore. 

Today felt different. 

Michael’s body (corpse?) had been rotting away with each new morning, his bones cracked and his skin nearly falling off of them like a plate of pulled pork. Now, he couldn’t feel it anymore. There was nothing there, nothing but the vague sense that he was moving, electric pulses under his skin keeping him barely awake enough to go along for the ride. 

Michael’s stunted view of the sky faltered suddenly. The creature had stopped moving. 

Shivering violently, Michael’s body fell to its knees. For the first time in what felt like years, a voice cut through his head. 

_Here_. 

Michael felt himself pulled slightly towards the road. Was this it? Was the thing inside him finally going to let his misery end? 

Instead of hurling him onto the asphalt, though, his arms braced himself over the ground, and the shivering turned to full-on convulsions. Michael could feel again, an unbearable fire spreading in his veins. A bubble of air caught in his throat and a choking noise came from his mouth, along with a searing burn in his throat, which felt like it was full of worms. 

It was like lightning: One moment, Michael felt as if he was going to burst apart at the seams, and then, the next moment, he felt like he’d been turned inside out. 

But... he could see much better now. Ignoring the pain, Michael realized his throat was clear. Scratchy, raw, but... completely clear. 

His entire body, in fact, was clear. Too clear. He collapsed in a heap of decomposed flesh and exhaustion. _Finally._

There was another electric surge, jolting Michael violently. Something cold began to creep around his bones, and it wasn’t the sweet embrace of death. He pleaded in his mind, begging to be left to die. He _wanted_ to be gone. 

_You won’t die_ , murmured a voice, and Michael fell unconscious for the first time since he’d been emptied of his organs. 

•••

Louise had stayed an extra hour at work her first day. Oddly enough, she wasn’t very tired by the end of it, but that was probably just the excitement of a new and lively work environment. She enjoyed tedious tasks like cleaning or organizing— they gave her time to think. 

Louise was currently in the midst of applying for college to help support her mother. They’d lived together ever since her father had left when Louise was nine or so, and Louise’s mother, Nancy, had had a much harder time finding someone who would hire a mostly-wheelchair-bound single mom, no matter how capable and persistent she was. 

Louise had started working as early as her mother would allow her, and together, when Nancy had eventually been hired at a sound, work-from-home job as well, they’d supported one another throughout the years. 

Their current apartment was perfectly sized for two, and, even better, close to Freddy’s. Louise had actually applied to the place before they’d even moved this close, so this new situation was ideal. 

What _wasn’t_ ideal was how much college tuition cost— and no amount of good grades was going to pay for it, scholarships or no. Louise intended to pay for it entirely with her own money, despite her mother’s protests. She believed in accountability, and though she would have no doubt paid back the debt, she preferred to handle her own matters. 

Luckily, her new job at the pizzeria paid surprisingly well, courtesy of its success and Jeff’s fairness and generosity. This was almost certainly her way through college— and her way of making sure that her mother was well taken care of. 

As Louise climbed the steps to exit the restaurant, she noticed the outline of a large truck parked at the top. It sounded like there were a few workers up there, all barking short commands to one another like “left” and “hold”. 

At the top of the stairs, she had a much clearer view: the wide back of the truck was open, a gaping black hole. Several men and one woman were standing nearby, crowded around a huge wooden box that Louise guessed must have been at least eight feet tall. Curiously, she lingered on the sidewalk, watching as they wheeled the massive thing around the corner. As it left her view, Louise got a glimpse of a stamped label on the side of the box— she couldn’t make out the first word, but the last one was definitely “Robotics”. 

Pursing her lips in thought, Louise headed to her car. Maybe she’d find out what it was tomorrow. 

The drive home was cheery in spite of overcast skies. Louise connected the car’s radio to her phone and played a few songs she and her mother had always liked, mouthing along to the lyrics all the way home. 

Her mother was already sitting outside the front gate to the apartment complex when Louise pulled into a parking space. She waited as her daughter gathered her things and came out. 

“Hey, Mom”, Louise breathed, pulling the woman in for a tight hug. Nancy chuckled and gave her a squeeze back. “Good first day?” 

Louise nodded, beaming. She couldn’t wait to tell her about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> • 
> 
> Ewww, metal vomit. Michael should really get that checked out.


	3. Necessities

Every day for nearly two years now, Dennis Fulton had closed the restaurant with his manager, Jeff. It was part of his and the business’s routine. 

After everything was tidied and put away, fresh for the next morning, they had to order supplies, change the lightbulbs, restock the vending machines, collect change from the arcade games, and various other mundane little tasks that ensured they’d be ready for the days to come. Dennis didn’t enjoy them, but he didn’t mind them, either. They were necessary. 

Tonight, however, Jeff had asked him to close on his own. He’d been feeling slightly under the weather and wanted to get home a bit early to try and rest as much as possible. 

Dennis had assured him it was no trouble. It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be. 

It sure did get dark around here at night, though, thought Dennis as he lugged a trash bag over to the dumpster in the back alley. He had difficulty seeing things as it was. This didn’t help. 

With some effort, Dennis managed to swing the over-full bag over the lip of the open dumpster and hurl it inside. His muscles ached in protest. He really needed to start working out again. 

Dennis flinched at a faint noise from behind him. 

Hand on his taser, he whirled around— only to find a young brunette woman standing there, looking confused. 

He laughed, restricting his hand. “Sorry! Uh— are you lost?” 

The woman, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, shook her head. Her brown hair was cut neatly above her shoulders. She was a bit stocky in build, but not short. She had a simple prettiness about her that Dennis found himself liking. 

“I was looking for _you_ , actually”, said the woman, smiling broadly. 

Dennis furrowed his brow. He didn’t recognize this person. “Me? I’m sorry, I don’t think I know who you are—“

“Do you happen to work here?” 

“Er— yes, actually, I do—“

Before Dennis could finish his thought, there was a rattling noise. 

It seemed... to be coming from the strange woman in front of him. 

At first, he was worried she had some sort of medical condition, but it sounded so artificial that he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly could be wrong. She was grasping at something around her neck.

Dennis swallowed, unnerved. He tried to calm his features. “Are you alright?” 

Slowly, without breaking eye contact, the woman grinned and pressed her thumb onto the pendant of her necklace. 

•••

When Louise got to work Friday morning, the truck from yesterday had left, along with the workers who had unloaded the tall wooden box. 

She had gotten there early today, before the place opened, so that she could help them set up for customers and learn the morning routines. Louise still hadn’t determined if she was taking the morning, afternoon, or evening shift. 

This time, Jeff had told her where to find the building’s back entrance. The restaurant itself was underground— this was the short, unassuming building on top of it. Louise hadn’t actually been inside of it yet, not on the ground level. 

According to Marty, it was where the generators were located, and there was even room inside for storage and a small office that Jeff or their other coworkers would go right before the restaurant closed for the day, since getting Internet connection underground was so hard. The other door at the back alley led down directly to the corridor by the employee lounge. 

Louise pulled the key Jeff had given her out of her pocket as she turned a corner, spotting where the door to the place was. 

The ‘office’ had one computer, and was largely bare of furnishing, an industrial feel to it. It had clearly been used for awhile, though, as there were dozens of posters and drawings plastered to the metal walls. 

Louise shivered; it was freezing in here. Dark, too. Were there no lights to turn on? 

There was a note taped to the computer screen:

_Louise— use this drawing to find your way to the employee entrance._

It was a crude illustration of arrows showing her the path that she needed to follow. 

She frowned, glancing around the dim space. There wasn’t another door in here besides the way she’d come in, so where was she meant to go from here? 

Her eyes fell on a black square to her left. It looked like a ventilation shaft. On her right was a matching square hole. 

Was she meant to... _crawl through_ there? Really? She glanced down at the paper. There couldn’t be any other way to go. This was where she was supposed to be. 

Taking a breath to quell her anxiety, Louise turned on her phone’s flashlight, beaming it into the daunting hole in the wall. “Here we go”, she muttered. 

The large metal tunnel was much colder than the office, and much darker too. Louise felt herself tense every time the floor of the vent made a clanging sound under her weight. She didn’t know why, but she had a distinct sense that she needed to be quiet.

Eventually, after a couple of turns, Louise found herself in a hallway tall enough to stand in. Ahead was a room with white tiles for flooring, some wooden structure in the corner— a storage closet, maybe? 

She was looking into a mirror when she stepped into the room; it was a bathroom. Odd placement, though she supposed it would have looked out of place no matter what in this building. 

Louise unfolded the paper in her hand and read one of the final directions: _Wash your hands_. What? She didn’t disagree with the importance of good hygiene, but how was this relevant? 

With a sigh, Louise rolled up her sleeves and stepped forward. There were two sinks under the mirror, but there was a yellow sticky note with an arrow pointing to the one on the right. She shrugged and turned the faucet’s handle. 

Immediately, the entire half of the sink slid backwards into the wall. 

Louise yelped and jumped back, watching the mechanics of whatever this was as a vertical opening was revealed underneath the bathroom sink. The faint outline of a wooden beam indicated the presence of a ladder positioned inside. 

_Weird,_ she thought, but she had to admit it was sort of cool. She shoved her phone and the paper into her back pocket and crouched down. 

The descent only took around fifteen seconds, but when Louise looked back up, there was only darkness. Perhaps the “sink” had gone back into place above her? 

Louise was met with familiar black-and-white tiles as she entered a new room. 

Unlike the above-ground building, it was brightly lit and near-pristine, the ceiling and walls a shiny white. Across from the ladder, there was a sole table with a checkerboard atop it, but no checker pieces. To her right, there was a metallic-looking door with a large button to the side of it. Louise went and pressed it. 

With a click, the door swung open, but she didn’t enter; the room was just a small kitchen, from the looks of it. It wasn’t where she’d been instructed to go. 

On the far left, there was another doorway, a border of red tiles lining its equally metal door. There was another button beside it. 

Bingo. 

This door, as she pushed its button, opened onto a dim, dormant room— it was the main dining area, Louise realized. It was strange to see it empty. She pocketed the paper with the instructions on it and retrieved her phone again, flicking on the flashlight so she didn’t trip over anything on her way to Jeff’s office. 

It was just slightly chilly in the restaurant, but nowhere near as cold as the upper office had been. Louise made way down the corridor until she arrived at her destination. Under the door, a faint light told her Jeff was already here. She knocked politely. 

For a moment, there was just silence, and then there was the soft scooting of a chair and the sound of a pen clicking. Louise marveled at how quiet the place was before Jeff unlocked the door and it swung open. 

“Good morning, Louise. I’m afraid I’m a bit tied up with a serious matter at the moment, would you mind waiting a bit? You can have a seat while I sort this out”, said Jeff, rubbing his hands. He looked tired. 

Louise nodded. “Of course, don’t worry about it.” 

Taking a seat, Louise watched as her manager made his way back behind his desk, expression very obviously distressed. 

Her fingers twitched. She hated seeing people stressed out. “Is everything okay, sir?” 

Jeff sighed. “I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s nothing.” 

Louise waited, trying not to look uninterested. She really was curious— but mostly just concerned. Jeff sat down and gestured to the telephone on his desk, which Louise hadn’t noticed until now. It was old fashioned, a shiny blue plasticy thing that reminded Louise of the 50’s. 

“Well, I haven’t heard from one of my employees this morning”, said Jeff. “He’s worked here for just about two years now. He’s never this late.” 

Louise tilted her head. “Maybe he’s just caught in traffic?” 

Jeff shook his head. “Couldn’t be. We both live across the street from one another less than a mile from here. And he hasn’t answered my calls.” 

“...Oh.” 

Her manager waved a hand. “Like I said, it could be nothing. I worry too much.” He chuckled sadly, tearing his eyes away from the phone. Louise knew the man was probably still thinking about it. 

“Anyway”, Jeff sighed, “I suppose it’s an extra lucky thing that you’re here so early, then. I’ll show you a few of our opening procedures, sound good?” 

Louise nodded. “Sounds good.” 

On the walk back down the corridor, Jeff pointed out a few different doorways— the restrooms, the janitor’s closet, the employee lounge. They entered the lounge and exited into the kitchen, where Louise had entered last time and met Marty. 

“Often times”, Jeff said, gesturing to the countertops, “We’ll have Chica in here. It seems to fit her character, y’know?” 

Louise nodded in agreement, though she hadn’t personally seen “Chica” yet. From what she knew, Chica— Rockstar Chica, to be specific— was a large, yellow animatronic chicken with a Southern accent. Louise was secretly ecstatic to see all of the robots up close. 

Jeff led Louise from the kitchen into the main dining area, pointing back at the corridor that his office resided in. “Back down that hallway is where the party rooms are. I’ll show you those later.” 

The dining area was dark until Jeff flipped a switch, making Louise blink to adjust. 

“And of course, you know this room”, said Jeff, smiling. “Stages are up there, tables are here, and the kids tend to hang out in those two back corners”, he explained, looking towards the side of the room housing the playscape and arcade machines. 

“Now, I’ve got to show you a few other rooms.” 

Louise wasn’t sure, exactly, why Jeff had saved this area for last on his little tour. The doorway he’d stopped at came up before where he’d mentioned the party rooms were at. Couldn’t he have stopped in earlier? 

_Oh well,_ she mused. It didn’t matter.

She was leaning forward on her toes, ready to enter the room as Jeff unlocked it, but Jeff stuck out an arm. “One moment, Louise. Let me tell you something before we go in.” 

“Yes?” 

For whatever reason, Jeff glanced around before he continued. It wasn’t really a fearful look— more worn-out. He pointed to the dark room. “This is one of the storage rooms.” 

“Okay...” 

“My policy”, Jeff said, clearing his throat, “Is that these rooms are not best frequented by any of you. Not even me.” He lowered his eyes. “It’s mostly old junk and a few scrapped robots in there. I don’t want any of you getting hurt. Tetanus, risk of electric shock, erratic animatronic behavior— things like that— understand?” 

Louise looked into the room. “I understand.” She held her breath; she wanted to say more, probe him about it, but she resisted the urge. Jeff didn’t seem like the kind of man to harbor any dirty secrets anyway. 

After Jeff had shown her around the party rooms, they headed back to his office. Jeff seemed to pick up his pace as he went inside, Louise noticed, and sure enough, he reached for the blue phone, dialing a number. Louise counted nine audible rings before the phone hung itself up. 

“Damn”, Jeff murmured, scratching his head. He met Louise’s eyes. “It’s fine. I’ll check up on him later today, ring his doorbell, or something.” 

Marty was the next person to come in after Louise, then a couple women she hadn’t met before, clearly related, and an older woman who gave Louise a bright smile as she stepped into the dining area. Louise was impressed that she’s managed to get down the stairs, until she recalled that there was an elevator at ground level by the start to the stairway. 

Freddy’s opened at 8 AM. A family of four was waiting at the door when Louise went to unlock it for them, two men and two giddy children. 

The slightly shorter man gave her a polite smile and a “Good morning” as she held open it for them, welcoming them inside. Louise heard Jeff’s cheerful voice as she closed it behind them, muffled slightly as the music turned on and the stages’ lights flickered to life. 

A rag in her company-issued apron’s pocket, Louise watched the stage intently as she began wiping down the tables. There was a door to the side of the main stage, tall and wide enough to fit a horse. As she observed, two of her coworkers went in, came back out, and propped it open. 

Sliding heavily along the wooden floor of the stage was the same tall box Louise had seen yesterday. Her coworkers, the sisters she had seen before, seemed to be having a fun time of showing off their strength to one another, huffing and puffing as they moved the huge crate to the far end of the stage and across a thin platform connecting to the smaller one. Once it was in the relative center, they stopped, wiping their brows. 

Louise blinked and remembered to move to the next table, swiping the rag across its surface. 

With the first customers seated somewhere nearby, satisfied for the time being, Marty was now free to approach the pair on stage. He was holding a large screwdriver. He hopped onto the raised platform and began turning the large screws that were holding the box closed, his other hand gripping the side of the box, as if it might fall onto him if he wasn’t careful. 

Louise moved tables again, spraying some disinfectant before wiping in a circular motion with the damp rag. She couldn’t see the logo on the box that she’d been trying to make out yesterday— it was probably on the back. 

There was a wooden crack as Marty loosened the last screw on the top of the box. Louise surveyed the room and noticed Jeff watching as well. 

Marty pulled off the face of the box and began side-stepping away, revealing a huge, white shape inside the crate as he moved out of Louise’s line of sight. 

_Another robot,_ she noted, smiling. It was a glossy white, with what looked like orange feet and an orange bird’s beak.

She watched in awe as Marty started to dismantle the rest of the robot’s container, revealing the thing’s brilliant metallic gleam and a segmented face and body. The eyes were closed, but Louise could see that they had thick black eyelashes. The animatronic had rich pink accents that made her think of a Barbie doll, just as glossy and shiny as the rest of its body. 

The last few tables Louise needed to clean, luckily, were the ones closest to the stages. She went to them eagerly, trying not to look too distracted on the job, but when she caught Jeff’s eye from across the room, he smiled and made a passive shooing gesture in the direction of the stage. _Go ahead_. 

Louise grinned and nodded, bubbling with excitement. She felt slightly silly, but she didn’t care. This was amazing— the things that technology could do! 

Close up, the animatronic bird was incredible. Louise had only glimpsed the Rockstar band on her first day. Their designs were interesting and colorful, but nothing like this. 

This thing was _different,_ somehow. 

With a flash of recollection, Louise took a few steps back, gaze darting around until her eyes landed on the part of the box with the label on it.  
It read “Afton Robotics.” 

Thinking back, Louise could swear that the name was familiar, but she couldn’t pinpoint how. Had she read something recently? Seen something? Heard something? She didn’t know.  
All she did know was that whoever had designed this was fairly advanced in their field. 

Reading closer, Louise read the animatronic’s name: “Funtime Chica.” 

“Isn’t she cool?”

Louise jumped. Marty had been standing right behind her. 

She scoffed, smiling. “Don’t _do_ that! But yeah— I’ve never seen anything like her before. She looks so complicated!”

Marty laughed. “They’re probably just fancier looking. That company almost went out of business awhile back, actually”, he said, pointing to the label she’d been reading. 

Louise pondered it. “Why?” 

Her coworker just shrugged. “Don’t know. But there’s no way that we got her at such a good price if she’s really as advanced as she looks.” 

Nodding, Louise looked back up at the white bird. Downgraded or not, she still thought it looked amazing. Kids were bound to love this thing. 

Marty watched her. “Do you want to see what happens when she’s awake?” 

“Obviously!” 

Marty squinted as he circled the robot, pressing an unseen switch and then standing, looking at Louise. “Ready?” 

“Absolutely.” 

Rubbing his hands together dramatically, Marty reached up to the robot’s face and pressed another button that Louise couldn’t see. 

The bird began emitting a low whirring noise similar to a computer booting up, the sound peppered with small clicks and rattles, until, finally, the eyes snapped open. They were neon pink. 

Right away, they began moving, seeming to scan the room. Each movement was fluid, the bird’s eyelids shifting and blinking every now and again. 

Louise couldn’t help but stare. Noticing that the family behind them had gone quiet, she snuck a glance to discover that they were, too. Even the rambunctious little boy and girl were quiet, eyes wide and curious. 

A small cough from next to her brought her back to reality. 

Marty stuck a thumb towards the door that the robot had come from. “We’ve got a couple more bots back there, if you wanna see them.” When Louise looked hesitant, Marty put up a hand. “Jeff won’t mind. He likes introducing em’ to newbies. C’mon, I’ll come ask with you.” 

“Actually”, Louise interrupted, “As great as that sounds, I think you’ll have to wait on that.” She jerked her head towards the table. One of the parents was waving to them. 

“Shit”, said Marty. “Thanks.” 

He all but bolted away, skidding to a halt beside the table, and Louise just shook her head, casting another glance towards Funtime Chica. 

The bird was looking right at her. Smoothly, it raised a shiny arm and waved, eyes squinted in a robotic smile that was strangely cute for a giant animatronic. Louise smiled, waved back and turned to finish cleaning off the tables, feeling warm. This was going to be a good day. 

Hours passed by much too quickly for Louise’s liking. The place was bustling with activity in no time, and she welcomed the challenge. She had yet to meet an unpleasant customer all day, and tips were weirdly large for a kid’s pizza place, but then again, you didn’t get to watch robots sing and perform at most pizza places. 

During her break, Louise asked Jeff to show her the backstage area. Even if the animatronics were already out performing, she was still eager to explore the place as much as possible. It was amazing how vast it really was below the surface. 

The door to backstage was on the stage itself, so Louise got a glimpse of Rockstar Chica up close as they slipped past. She wasn’t as graceful as her Funtime counterpart, but seemed equally animated, shaking a pair of brightly colored maracas and tapping her orange foot in time to the music. Louise already liked her just as much as the other one. 

Louise followed Jeff through the door, letting it close behind them and muffle the noise from the stages. 

Down a short flight of a few carpeted stairs, a wide room with an intricate rug in the middle greeted her. The place was dim, but not dark— fluorescent lights glowed from the ceiling, a few smaller ones sitting on top of a row of mirrors against one wall. There was also a large, carved oak bookshelf, the sort that looked like it belonged in a castle, and an adjoining wooden wardrobe. 

“This stuff is mostly just here for the hell of it”, explained Jeff. “I wanted it to feel less plain back here, you know? I like to think the animatronics appreciate it.” He crossed the carpet, pausing in another doorway as Louise followed. 

Before them was a short hallway lit with purplish-pink light. The flooring was different here, smooth white marble instead of the dark carpet of the previous room. As they rounded a bend, the silhouette of a tall, long-eared figure was backlit by yet more soft neon lights. 

“That’s Bonnie”, said Jeff, although Louise already knew this. Rockstar Bonnie was light blue in pictures, but he looked purple in this room. His suit was smooth and shiny like all of the others. 

“Why isn’t he on stage?”, asked Louise. It seemed a shame to leave such an interesting character alone back here. 

“He’s charging”, said Jeff. “For whatever reason, he takes a little longer to get to full power, so on the rare occasions that it’s time to charge these guys, Bonnie here takes his sweet time.” 

Louise was confused. “You charge them?” It hadn’t occurred to her that these types of robots needed charging. 

“Yes, but as I said, it’s a rare occasion. Their power lasts for nearly a month without charging. We don’t like to charge them unless they’re low, or else it might take longer to turn them back on when it’s time.” 

“Oh”, said Louise. She lingered a moment longer before following her manager back the way they came. The sleeping animatronic was humming like Funtime Chica had, only more faintly, like a purring housecat. Louise waved shyly at the rabbit for no reason in particular as she left, though she knew it was silly to think a robot could get lonely. 

The performing animatronics were standing and pivoting in place when the pair came out from backstage, the background music now quieter and more casual. Louise figured they were between songs.

She was about to ask Jeff when one of her coworkers came in though the guest entrance and waved to him. 

Louise’s eyes darted around, unsure of what to do, but Jeff gestured his head towards the doors, indicating for her to follow. She hurried after him. 

It was one of the siblings Louise didn’t know the name of, the one with glasses and a short, pretty afro. She looked out of breath, like she’d just ran up and down the stairs ten times. 

“It’s Dennis”, she gasped, panting. “I found his car.” 

“Found?” Jeff looked alarmed. “What do you mean?”

The poor girl looked frantic. “I—I don’t know. It was across the street, I didn’t notice it this morning, I couldn’t see it because it’s— well, it’s in a ditch...”

Wordlessly, all three employees rushed out of the doors, Jeff barking for Marty to stay and watch the place. Louise kept pace, adrenaline fueling her rush to the top. 

Sure enough, a gleam of silver stuck out from a dip in the ground across the road.

Louise, having never seen Dennis or his car, had thought it abandoned when she’d passed it on her way to work. Guilt pooled in her stomach. She should have said something— at least _mentioned_ it. Maybe they could have gotten here sooner. 

The street was not a busy one, despite the cluster of establishments it bisected. The trio jogged across, coming to a halt as they reached the peak of the slope. 

There, in the bottom of the ditch, as the girl had described, was a silver, battered car. There were tiny dents all over the machine, but strangely no major ones, which one would expect. If Dennis had crashed here, it didn’t look like it. 

Jeff was already stumbling down the slope, barely keeping his balance in his rush to the car.  
Louise’s coworker waved her hands. “Jeff! He’s not in there!” 

Jeff wasn’t listening. It was sad to watch the man stagger around the vehicle, eyes wide and desperate. _They must be good friends,_ thought Louise sadly.

Jeff scoured the car for evidence of where his absent employee could be while the girl (Abby, as Louise found out in the next few minutes) called the police. Louise felt a bit useless, but there was nothing she could really do here except wait. Eventually, the cops arrived and Jeff told them to go back to the restaurant and take care of things until he was done.

Louise’s prior cheeriness had completely left her by the time her shift was over. She hated these sorts of occurrences— poor Dennis. Poor Jeff, too. 

Apparently, the police had found no evidence that he had been taken by anyone, but it wasn’t as if they could disprove that theory, either. Everything was up in the air.

Saturday was uneventful. There was a tense mood among the staff throughout the day, but they did their best to hide it from their loyal, happy customers. Jeff, usually chipper, had lost much of his enthusiasm. He didn’t snap at anyone, though. He simply wasn’t that type of man. His worry only made him sad.

Sunday was a nightmare. 

Louise arrived at the building, parked her car, and was met with a line of police tape and several brightly flashing police cars as she rounded the building, intending to take a shortcut through the alleyway entrance. 

Her jaw hung agape at the scene before her. 

It was insane: a full-fledged crime scene, the whole of the back alley was covered in the yellow tape, nearly a dozen officers walking around or talking in groups. A pair of men were crouching and peering under a shiny black tarp that was hiding something next to the dumpster. A few feet away, a much smaller tarp covered another object, a dark stain on the cement underneath. 

Louise remembered to breathe. 

“Ma’am, please continue on your way. The owner has informed us that the restaurant is closed for the day”, came a voice from nearby.

Louise looked up to see a ginger-haired cop with his arms crossed. 

With a silent nod, she turned and went back the way she’d come. 

She felt sick. What had happened there? Did Jeff know? Did _anyone_ know? 

What had been under those tarps? 

Back at home, Louise opted for telling her mother an easier story about pest control and sanitation. It was one of the very few times she had ever lied to her... but it felt necessary in this context.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> •
> 
> Digging this out of my Notes app was fun. I’d forgotten how this chapter had escalated things...


	4. Introductions

When Louise arrived to work on Wednesday morning, the shock of Dennis’s disappearance had somewhat faded. 

Louise herself was still tense, though, and that was mostly because Jeff’s demeanor since the incident had changed dramatically. He didn’t say much other what what needed to be said, spent most of his time in his office, and would often zone out when others were speaking with him. 

Since the police had left days ago, there had been no word of what they’d found or what had happened— or if it had anything to do with Dennis. Business hadn’t slowed down, namely because the cops hadn’t stayed very long behind the restaurant that day, but also because it seemed like progression of the holiday season was drawing people to come and spend their time and money there. 

On her lunch break, Jeff popped his head into the employee lounge and motioned for her and Marty to follow him out. The two exchanged a glance before doing so, wordlessly following their manager down the corridor. Louise felt a cold knot in her stomach, but she didn’t know why. 

“The police have arrested a suspicious character as of this afternoon”, Jeff began once they’d entered his office, not bothering to close the door. His face was stoic. 

Marty looked scared. “What about Dennis?” 

Jeff shook his head. “They don’t know, Marty. All they told me is that there was suspicious activity around our establishment.” 

“What kind of activity?”, Louise interjected, her heart racing. 

The others both turned to look at her, and Jeff looked uncomfortable. “Well, apparently, someone has been trying to get into the place after hours and interfere with a few of our automated systems.” He met their eyes. “For one, the ventilation.” 

Louise didn’t know what to make of his serious tone, but Marty raised his eyebrows. “Again? Do you think it’s the same guy?” 

Jeff shrugged. “Possibly.” 

“Guy...?”, asked Louise, but Jeff was rooting through the papers on his desk, seemingly unaware she’d said anything. 

Marty glanced at her and shook his head. _Later_ , he mouthed. 

“So”, said Jeff, “What I’m going to need from you two, as well as your coworkers, is some extra help, if you’re able. I need at least two people in this building after hours. Just for the next week or so. I know you aren’t qualified for security—that was Dennis’s job. I’ll figure something out.” He paused, looking first at Marty, who nodded. 

“I can do that.” 

Louise hesitated, biting her lip. She should really discuss this with her mother first. But what if the woman didn’t let her help? Her mother was a worrier for sure. Louise really did want to be reliable. She wanted to make Jeff’s burden just a bit lighter; he’d been so great to her and her coworkers. Was she going to be able to hold back the full truth for a while, or would she risk it and ask directly? 

“Louise?”, said Jeff. “It’s all right if you can’t do it. I understand—“ 

“No, I can”, said Louise, forcing out the breath she’d been holding. “I can stay after hours too.” 

Some of the stress visibly melted from her manager’s face. He closed his eyes. “I appreciate it very much, you two. In the meantime, I need to recruit more folks for the staff to make up for Dennis, so I’ll be here for most of the day today. Thank you.” 

Marty and Louise both made small gestures of acknowledgment before Louise turned and stepped out, waiting for Marty, who gently pulled the office door closed behind them. 

“Well, that was heavy”, Marty murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. “You sure you’re good to do this on such short notice?” 

Louise narrowed her eyes. “Are _you?_ ”

Marty smirked. “Okay, I get your point. I just meant that you’re newer, and all. Might be tiring if you aren’t used to it.” 

“Used to it? You mean you’ve stayed late before?” 

“Yeah”, Marty said, swinging his arms, “but it wasn’t exactly like _this_. We were just getting some extra cleaning done. It was still pretty taxing. I slept like a rock when I got home.” 

Louise shrugged, sighing. She let herself lean against the wall, mind racing. “I wish I could make the poor guy feel better. This sucks.” 

“It does”, Marty agreed. “And it’s sad, too. Dennis was working here before I was.” 

Louise thought back to the crime scene she’d walked in on days before. Surely if Dennis had been hurt, or, god forbid, killed, they would have heard something about it by now? That couldn’t be the case. 

But what had the tarps been for, then? The stains on the ground? It didn’t add up. And who was trying to get in and screw with their AC? 

“Hey”, said Louise. “What was he talking about back there, with the ventilation thing?” 

Marty’s eyes widened. “Oh, right. Some guy tried to set the place on fire a few years back. Could be the same person.” 

An _arsonist?_ What the hell? Louise hated herself for it, but she felt slightly betrayed by the news, although it wasn’t like Jeff had deliberately hidden this from her. She just hadn’t known. But it was still a shock to know that there had indeed been some sketchy stuff around this place. It was disappointing. She’d really believed the company was taking a turn for the better. 

The office door opened next to where Marty had been standing, making him jump in surprise. Jeff was looking out at them. 

“Good news. I’ve just got a new hire.” 

“Oh, good!”, said Louise, trying to sound cheerful. Marty gave a silent thumbs-up of encouragement. 

Jeff had the ghost of a smile on his sleep-deprived face. “Thank you two again. You can leave around 6 in the morning, since I’ll be there by 7, and I’ll give you the day off tomorrow as well if you’d like.” 

•••

Louise called her mother on her cell at the time she would normally be getting ready to leave. She told a half-truth about wanting to help out her team, which her mother begrudgingly agreed to on the conditions that Louise would let herself rest the next day. They came to a compromise: Louise would come later in the afternoon the next day. 

Jeff stayed with Marty and Louise for twenty minutes after closing, wrapping up some paperwork and letting his employees take care of the usual cleaning procedures. 

The place had been twice as busy since the arrival of the Funtime Chica animatronic, which meant a little extra work to get the restaurant back into good condition after all the guests had left. Louise didn’t slack off for a moment as she helped her coworkers take out the trash and scrub the floors. 

To both Louise and Marty’s relief, the night went on without trouble, although Louise felt a little groggy by the end. To keep herself awake, she downed a cup of instant coffee before she left with her coworker, locking up and parting ways at 6. 

When Louise came back in the afternoon, somewhat well-rested, Jeff was talking to a pair of men she didn’t recognize. She skipped her usual greeting and gave him a polite nod as she passed on her way to the employee lounge to clock in for the day. 

“Hi, Louise!”, chirped Brenda, one of the kitchen workers. She was in her thirties, with reddish-brown braids and freckled light brown skin. She had a slight pudge that made her look motherly, though she lived alone. Louise liked her immensely. 

“Hi”, Louise smiled, setting down her things on one of the tables. “Whew. Sorry. I’m kind of out of it.” 

Brenda was wiping flour from her apron. “Of course you are, silly, you’ve screwed up your sleep schedule. D’you want some throwaway pizza?” She pointed to a plate with a misshapen cheese pizza laying atop it. 

Louise’s stomach rumbled. She’d eaten at home, but the sight of the hot food was too tempting. “Don’t mind if I do.” 

Brenda tore a paper towel from its holder on the wall, handing it to the younger woman. Louise grinned in thanks, picking up a plastic butter knife from the basket of disposable utensils nearby. As Brenda patted her shoulder and went back into the kitchen, a small footstep from elsewhere made Louise pause. 

She turned. “Hi Marty— oh!” 

It wasn’t Marty. Instead, an unfamiliar girl was standing in the doorway to the hall. She was a bit taller than Louise, a soft-looking green sweater on. 

Louise reddened. “Sorry! I’m Louise, and I take it your name isn’t Marty...?” 

The other giggled. “Nice to meet you, and no, that isn’t my name. It’s Sarah.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m starting today.” 

_Right, the new hire_. 

The two shook hands and Louise breathed out, looking around. “Have you had a tour of the place yet?” 

As it turned out, Jeff had intended for Louise to show her around. He seemed to be in better spirits today, which put everyone else at ease.

Sarah Weaver, who was twenty-eight and lived with her mother as well, was a mild and sweet woman. Louise thought she might be overwhelmed at the restaurant, with its grandiosity and bustling atmosphere, but if she was, she didn’t show it. It seemed like she was fairly resilient. 

The tour was a good distraction from Louise’s tiredness, anyway, and it took up most of her time for that shift. By the end of the day, she felt _brighter._

She had managed to collect two hefty paychecks in the time she had worked there, and they’d already majorly improved life at home. Groceries were easier to buy, laundry was covered, gas for the car was much more manageable— and Louise was starting to feel like life was improving for them, although it had been such a short time. She’d be breezing through college in no time at this rate. 

Lately, Jeff had been hinting that Louise would be allowed to help clean and maintain the animatronics themselves very soon— and she could hardly contain her excitement about it. There was just something about them that drew her to them; she couldn’t quite explain it. 

In fact, she had even had some dreams about them before. Mostly, they made brief, nonsensical cameos, behaving oddly in the way that all beings in dreams tend to do. Sometimes, they would be talking off-script— phrases they didn’t normally say, or flat-out having conversations like real people would. Louise worried she’d start dreaming up whole cartoonishly silly plots for them. 

Marty, according to Jeff, was one of the more experienced staff members when it came to the robots. He had even helped do small repairs and reboots when the mechanics weren’t readily available, and rarely had a conundrum that he couldn’t solve. Jeff called him a “bot-wrangler”. Marty hated this. Everyone else loved it, Louise included.

Training Sarah was also on her plate, though the task was hardly daunting. Sarah was a fast learner and took initiative. She was reliable for sure, something Louise knew Jeff appreciated these days. 

At home on a Sunday morning, Louise’s cell phone began buzzing in her pocket. She rarely got calls— her cousins, who lived nearby, often called to check in on her and her mother or ask to hang out. They were like her siblings, always had been. 

But Louise hadn’t exactly had the time to hang out and chat lately, which she’d told them, so it was a surprise to hear. She set down the spatula she’d been rinsing off to use and pulled out her device. 

It was Jeff. She picked up. 

“Good morning, Louise.” 

“Morning. Aren’t you closed until later today?” 

“Sure am”, said Jeff. “But me and Marty are here early. Would you, by chance, be interested in your first lesson in animatronic care?” 

Louise was smiling so broadly it hurt, earning an eyebrow raise from her mother, who had been reading the newspaper at the kitchen table. 

“I’ll be there in fifteen.”


	5. Restless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a lot to unpack in this one. 
> 
> •

Henry Emily wiped his forehead, craning his neck as he mulled over some of his old animatronic and electronic blueprints. He’d been in the habit of re-organizing lately, and his blueprints made up a significant portion of the clutter in his house. 

What was left of his house, anyway. 

It had been strange for the first year, staying in the ruined building. Henry had sworn he would never go back, and yet here he was, breaking yet another empty promise to himself and desecrating what was practically sacred ground at this point. But where else could he have gone? Any motel he stayed at would eventually become too risky. 

Being out in the world in general was risky these days. Though his old business partner was, for the most part, out of commission, that didn’t mean Henry wasn’t under threat. There were numerous lawsuits he’d been barely managing using a fake name, some going back years and years, a few disgruntled employees and the occasional injured former customer. 

Henry couldn’t muster enough an ounce of anger toward any of them. His franchise had gone downhill, and so had his reputation— and the cost had been much higher than anything that could be repaid with money. 

Innocent lives had been lost. Childhoods had been lost. Faith had been lost. It was his greatest failure, and it had all started with the 83’ accident. 

Henry didn’t allow himself to blame Afton anymore. No amount of shock value could excuse Henry’s own blindness to the truth; he was just as guilty as William, in that sense, and he thought about that nearly every day. 

In recent years, Henry had devised numerous ways to properly handle the dilemma. No path was clean, but all had the same goal: Justice. Closure. An end to it all. 

And by God, had there been a lot of ground to cover. Henry had been tasked with tracking down multiple entities at once, putting himself at risk, in case one or multiple should find him in the wrong place or at the wrong time. _Everything_ needed to work out perfectly. 

He’d even hired several friends of friends to help out with broadcasting a signal across the state, and rigging the old, original Fredbear’s location, now revamped, to be easily flammable. Henry had wanted to make sure all traces of his past were gone— and all traces of those tortured spirits he knew were trapped between life and death. 

Well. 

That had all gone to shit, of course. 

The older man coughed into his fist as he switched off his desk lamp, leaning back in his chair. He should really get some rest. His nightly routine had been chaos lately, and it didn’t help that he spent most of his nights up worrying about what atrocities all of those undead machines could be up to without his intervention. 

There was also the constant threat of being found out— by the machines, on one hand, which would no doubt end quite messily— or by the local law. Despite being legally dead, Henry had nearly been arrested in his first attempt at destroying the last of those broken animatronics. 

Something had gone wrong with the automated system he’d set up; before he had even gotten to speak to Elizabeth, or any of the others, as he’d planned, his communications had all been cut off at once. Not only that, but, simultaneously, the system he’d rigged to engulf the building in flames had failed right away. 

Neither of these things had happened in his test runs— but he had supposed there was a lot that could have gone wrong anyway. It had been a miracle to slip away with his own life and a place to go, though the knowledge that he’d failed had been crushing. What would his next move be? 

That same question had gone unanswered for nearly three years now. To Henry’s knowledge, the restaurant had undergone management changes in his absence, something he hadn’t thought possible, since he had discontinued his own participation in his corporation for this concluding act. Apparently, someone had bought the actual building, used the company name, and had managed to establish themselves in his company. 

As it turned out, Henry hadn’t quite snuffed out all branches of Fazbear Entertainment. Another mistake to add to his growing list. 

In the past few months, on top of all of this, however, Henry had been tracking something new. Something undiscovered. 

During the setup process for the broadcast signal he’d used to lure the animatronics to him in the first place, Henry had installed a tracker of sorts. On its radar, he could roughly gauge where an active, remnant-tainted animatronic might be, and how fast they were moving. He’d used this to find Elizabeth, William, LEFT-E, and something he called the “amalgamation”; a combined ‘cluster’ of animatronics that had somehow fused into one entity. 

And since his failed arson attempt, Henry had seen no blips on the radar besides the near-stationary group of machines that he’d lured. They had eventually disappeared from the scanner over time, either destroyed or deactivated, he presumed. He wasn’t going to assume anything until he knew. 

What he hadn’t anticipated was seeing a new blip show up on the radar. It was dodgy, hard to track, and sporadic in its movements. Henry had written it off as a misread for a long time. 

Until the blip had suddenly become stable. Until it had moved, smoothly and consistently, right over to where Henry had last recorded the others at— Freddy’s. It had found the building as well. 

But, upon investigation, he hadn’t found the blip on-site at _all._ All he had been able to find, by himself in the dead of night, had been the original creatures he’d brought there in the first place— all deactivated, or so it would seem. 

Unfortunately, he hadn’t had the time to try and destroy them that night, which had been infuriating for Henry. 

He remembered having to stare at Afton’s decrepit, torn coffin, and walk away, praying to every deity he knew that the man was well and truly dead— or at least too far gone to remember who he’d been. A monster like that didn’t deserve to have a sense of identity. 

Henry’s cell phone lit up with a text from one of his few remaining colleagues— police had been seen around Freddy’s in the past few weeks. 

He stiffened. Surely it couldn’t have anything to do with him? He hadn’t physically been there in ages, and besides, he knew he couldn’t possibly have left some clue behind. 

Frowning, Henry sent a reply asking for his colleague to elaborate. Just what he needed— another threat to his already failing operation. 

•••

_Check the stage_. 

William hurriedly switched screens, confirming Foxy and Bonnie were in their respective places. 

Fucking bastards. He’d long since learned their habits, but not before he’d succumbed to a violent end, over and over again. He might have deemed this all an elaborate nightmare if it weren’t for the shock of real agony that tore through him every time he died. 

It was funny, between his inevitable losses, William didn’t feel the white-hot, searing pain of metal rods and springlocks stretching his flesh apart that he usually felt when he was awake. It was a new and separate sensation. He was starting to question whether he was even alive, but at this point, it was sort of a loaded question. 

Miraculously, the ‘night’ ended, allowing him a brief moment to collect himself before the next one begun against his wishes. It was always some random combination of animatronics that hunted him, and once or twice he was even certain that they’d _all_ been after him. He’d even been killed by his own hand before. It was like looking into a distorted mirror, or having an evil(er) twin that was out to destroy him. It was by far his least favorite way to die. 

William realized he’d been stewing in his own thoughts for a second too long. Where was the cluttered office he was meant to land in? Everything was black, and there were no sounds except for his own mind racing at a mile a minute. He felt himself grow tenser. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t the routine. 

William heard— actually _heard_ — his own raspy, strained voice cry out in shock and pain at the sudden sensation of stinging in his nerves, felt the raw pain in his torn throat as he tried to scream. 

He felt his suit twitch. He felt his body twitch. 

And then, he could see. 

Well, barely. It was dark wherever he was, but it was better than the absence of any sight at all. He was aware of a faint light, so small and full anyone else would have missed it, slipping under what looked like the crack of a door. 

Just where was he? 

To William’s frustration, he found himself unable to move much besides a slight shifting; something heavy was surrounding him, weighing him down, but he couldn’t make out what it was. It felt solid, like metal. 

He sighed, letting the mascot head fall back against the cold, damp wall. He would just have to wait. 

If he weren’t in this godawful suit, he might have been bored in here, but it was hard to be bored when what was left of your muscles felt like they’d been lit on fire. 

Still, it wasn’t like he hadn’t been used to it. Sure, he’d been... _asleep_... for some amount of time, but he’d felt this before. He could learn to bear it again. 

The wall against William’s back vibrated slightly; it was as if there was loud music nearby, but he couldn’t make it out over the steady sound of the building’s air conditioning and the hum of nearby electronics. Shifting as much as he could to try and peer around the room, he looked for a way to free himself, noting that his legs were completely pinned by whatever was on top of his suit, but his good arm was free. 

It took considerable effort to move the bar across his torso far enough so he might slip underneath it later. William was now sure that this had been intentional; though he was pleasantly surprised that he still retained enough strength to pry it away from himself. 

But who had done this to him? Where was he? He couldn’t remember much aside from his persistent nightmares, although the image of a burning room floated around in his mind. 

Yes, that was it. He’d escaped from that horrid, decrepit maze of a place, but not unscathed. He’d had to resort to digging through the rubble to find one of his old suits. Dismantling it and re-assembling it had taken ages, especially when he had to be as cautious as he did. One wrong move and he could fall apart, and he wasn’t too keen on finding out what happened to the human soul after death. The process had taken weeks to finalize, and he’d done it all with his sole remaining arm, the other of which had been singed off in the blaze. 

A soft hissing noise alerted William to something else in the room with him. Possibly vermin, he thought, repulsed and on edge. 

He’d had problems with rats before, namely because rats were scavengers, and, well, he probably looked quite appetizing to them, what with most of his skin gone, although he couldn’t imagine that any mortal creature could survive long after consuming decades-old flesh. The notion was funny, in a sick way, but then again, most of his humor was the same. 

The noise repeated. It wasn’t the hissing squeak of a rodent, William realized, it was much too dry and raspy for that. It had a bizarre echo, as well, like whatever was making the sound had been trapped inside a tin can. 

Feeling around with the suit’s right arm, William located another wall— he was just shy of being directly in a corner. 

If he could, he would have frowned. He was sure the sound had been coming from this direction. Was it perhaps in another room? Was it even relevant, or was he chasing after meaningless whispers? 

He dropped his arm, worn out. Best not to waste energy on uncertainties. 

But he certainly wasn’t going to let himself fall asleep, either, so William concentrated on every sensation, no matter how painful, that coursed through him. He could bide his time. 

Eventually, something would happen. He’d be moved, intentionally or otherwise, or something would allow him to. 

He was sure of it. 

•••

Louise wasn’t usually a person to play favorites. 

She tended to find favor with all parts of a whole, or, in this case, an animatronic band, but she couldn’t help that she hung around certain robots more often than others. 

Namely, Funtime Chica, who was still the only animatronic the restaurant had received from Afton Robotics, and who was clearly different from the others in aesthetics and behavior alike. Louise thought the shiny creature might have been her favorite of the whole bunch. 

She’d done her research— apparently, there had used to be more of these sorts of robots, but for some reason she still hadn’t found, their business had seemingly vanished off of the face of the earth. It was weird; Louise had never once felt that Jeff was keeping anything important from his employees. She trusted him, and therefore, she trusted Fazbear Entertainment, but its history, upon further research, was concerning indeed. So many freak accidents, scandals, and even some crime scenes. 

That part had sent chills down her spine as she read it— hadn’t she been shooed away by a police officer at her place of work only a little while ago? Was this just another part of the pattern? 

She hoped not. She badly wanted to be able to have faith in the company. She already had complete faith in her boss. It would be comforting to be able to extend that same feeling to his higher-ups. 

But still, despite the murkiness, Louise was an optimist, and a curious woman, too. She was fascinated by the inner workings of the animatronics she worked on and around. How could she not be? Sometimes, they moved so fluidly, she could almost picture a human being piloting them from the inside. 

Funtime Chica wasn’t the only animatronic with their own quirks. All of them had unique ‘traits’, voices, looks, and names, of course, all of which added to the magic of seeing them onstage. 

Rockstar Bonnie, for example, who Louise hadn’t been able to see for her first couple of weeks of working there, turned out to have a remarkably smooth and soothing singing voice, for a robot. Hearing him often made Louise think of spending cold winter nights with her mother, huddled up by the fireplace in the old house they’d moved from, listening to Christmas songs on the radio. In that sense, Bonnie felt like family. 

Foxy had his own room, but would often perform with the others onstage depending on the restaurant’s planned schedule for him. He was a fan favorite among the children, as was Rockstar Freddy, whose character was charismatic and boisterous. Rockstar Chica was often popular among parents, since she was one of the only animatronics that ‘took part’ in educating the youngest patrons, usually in the kitchen. She was also there for every birthday to sing the song in her funny Southern accent, emoting and livening up the party. And then of course, there were the ‘side’ characters, a variety of animals and creatures that expanded on the band’s capacity. 

Aside from the active bands that would switch out, there was a security measure in the building in addition to the cameras that Louise thought was particularly interesting— a mostly immobile animatronic, it resembled a doll or a posable wooden figurine, with a painted white face, a smile, and a striped pattern on its limbs and ‘hat’. 

Technically, it didn’t have a name; most of Louise’s coworkers just called it the “security puppet”, but she’d been ruminating over whether or not to give it a nickname herself. This animatronic didn’t look anything like Funtime Chica, but its functions and ability to move as fluidly as the others made it a unique installment in the restaurant. 

Children and parents were given chipped bracelets as soon as they walked in the doors, all with sensors designed to alert the puppet if a child had wandered into an area either unsafe or unfit for their presence. Adults sometimes set it off, too, but that was mostly because some people tended to forget to return to bracelet before they left. 

Weirdly enough, the puppet didn’t seem to need to ‘charge’ like any of the other animatronics. Jeff said it ran on a sort of advanced battery, the kind that lasted a good while. 

Louise wondered if Fazbear Entertainment had ever branched out into the toy market. With their technological prowess, she imagined they’d make a killing in that industry. 

Anyway, she was getting into the rhythm of the restaurant now. She was starting her fifth week at Freddy’s, and though that wasn’t much, she already felt like she belonged there. The constant hustle and bustle was good for her. It kept her alert. 

...Which was why this night was such a letdown. 

Louise wouldn’t voice it, but she was disappointed that night. Glancing at the clock in the break room, she sighed, wiping her mouth with a napkin. As much as she wanted to support her team, she didn’t relish the occasional night shifts. 

The feeling made her guilty. Jeff was so kind and patient, she should be grateful for the hours, shouldn’t she? Besides, he paid more for night shifts, since they were longer. Louise had considered asking for more, even though she didn’t enjoy them. Was the extra pay going to be worth it? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t even know why she disliked the shifts so much. 

Maybe it was the quietness, the lack of voices. Often times, she would be alone for these shifts, but she couldn’t complain— she had taken each one voluntarily, and Jeff was always willing to ask someone else. Louise just didn’t want to seem unreliable, but she supposed she should cut herself _some_ slack...

A resounding muffled bang from a distant room broke Louise out of her thoughts. Heart jumping, she palmed the taser on her belt, standing slowly. 

Was someone trying to break in? She had been alone for this shift tonight, she’d been sure. 

It came again, louder this time. It didn’t sound like someone banging on a door. It was a heavy thump, like someone being thrown into a wall... 

Louise shook her head. _Don’t jump to conclusions_. 

She left the room silently, making sure to hold the taser out in front of her, thumb ready on the button. 

The young woman continued down the corridor, listening for the sound, noting that she was definitely picking up some subtler shuffling noises as well— and was that _scraping?_ She was slowing down now, every muscle tensed to run at the slightest hint of danger. Taser or no, Louise wasn’t about to test her luck. 

At the second to last door before the end of the corridor, Louise stopped, heart in her throat. 

The storage room. 

It was coming from here.

Jeff’s cautious voice echoed in her mind as she shakily fumbled with the keys on her belt, but she ignored it, already feeling guilty enough for directly disobeying her supervisor. She wished she were here with someone else so Jeff would know she wasn’t just being nosy and irresponsible. 

Unlocking the door as quietly and carefully as she could, Louise paused— the scraping had stopped. Maybe she could just leave and forget that this ever happened. 

No, she thought. Against the rules or not, she had to check this out. It could be something urgent, like a pest problem or a faulty pipe, and she was sure Jeff couldn’t penalize her for bringing a problem like that to his attention. He wouldn’t. 

Right?

The storage room door creaked open into a dark, chilly space. Louise retrieved her cell phone from her back pocket and turned on its light, surveying the room before her. 

Storage was huge, a lot bigger than she’d expected. It seemed to connect to yet another room, as her light fell on another closed door on one end of it. 

Throughout the room were stacks of large wooden or cardboard boxes, most closed, some open, full of papers, spare parts, posters, cleaning supplies, and other miscellaneous items Louise couldn’t identify. She frowned, checking for any sign of movement, but she could hear no skittering of tiny rat paws, and no dark shapes darted across the floor. 

As she panned her light to the back of the room, past the other door, her vision was partially obscured. A tall shelf, packed with yet more boxes and some power tools, blocked a shape she couldn’t make out, something right up against the back wall. 

Against her better judgement, Louise stepped closer, maneuvering cautiously around things strewn across the floor or sitting in haphazard stacks and piles around the room. There was absolute silence now, which was not at all comforting to the anxious employee. 

At last, Louise stepped around the shelf, taking time to make sure she wasn’t stepping on anything before she aimed her light at the dark shape. 

“Please”, rasped a voice, and Louise shrieked, catching herself on a crate behind her. She’d almost dropped her phone. 

In front of her was an animatronic— or so she assumed. The thing was beaten up, probably here for parts or perhaps left here to rot from disuse. 

Louise remembered to breathe. Who had just spoken? 

Not this _thing_. Surely not. 

It had been faint; she could have imagined or misheard some hissing of a pipe. 

And yet, she did not move her light from the broken old suit. 

Louise waved a hand in front of it, not entirely sure what she expected it to do. It probably hadn’t moved, let alone performed, for years, by the state of it. It was doubtful she’d activate a functioning motion sensor. 

Then, there was a sickening crack as the animatronic’s head snapped up to look at her. 

Louise screamed and scrambled back, knocking something over in the dark room. She’d dropped her phone. She flailed frantically, feeling around for it. 

The cracking came again, the sort of sound you’d hear when you pressed your knuckles in or stretched your back. It made Louise freeze in place, crouched and shaking. She’d never heard an animatronic make a noise like that. 

As she sat completely still, petrified, there was a shift of artificial fur and metal, and the scraping from before. It sounded like chalk against concrete. 

_Get it together_ , Louise told herself, shaking her head. _It’s just malfunctioning_. 

She felt a bit silly for screaming. Hadn’t she worked with these robots for weeks now? They were harmless— lightweight, colorful singing mascots with numerous built-in safety features. They were made for children, for crying out loud.

Concentrating hard, Louise slid her hands across the cold cement floor, finally feeling the rubbery material of her phonecase as she fastened the fingers of her right hand around it. She pulled it towards her. Her hand brushed against the fur of the old robot as she did so, and some smooth piece of what must have been polished wood or plastic, before she finally could grab the whole thing off of the floor. 

Louise sighed as she stood. The screen was cracked. She’d have to be extra careful with it n-

_SHIT_. 

Louise clapped her free hand over her mouth to muffle herself. 

Something was grabbing her ankle. 

And then, horribly, the rasp she thought she had imagined came again. 

“Relax.” 

Louise was near tears. This didn’t sound like the pre-recorded lines of the robots she worked with— this almost sounded like a _person_. 

But then where had the voice come from? Had she missed this person with her light? She’d been certain there had been no other room in here. 

Unless it was— no...

“Who’s there?”, Louise whimpered, voice cracking a bit. She didn’t want to believe that the old animatronic had just spoken to her. 

She was waiting for the grip on her ankle to fall away, but it didn’t falter. The rough hand (?) around her leg didn’t loosen at all. 

Five horrible seconds passed by with absolutely no sound other than Louise’s own panicked breathing. 

Then, someone coughed, startling her again. It was a hollow sound, like someone very sick was struggling to breathe, but the stranger’s possible fragility didn’t make Louise any less afraid. 

She clenched her fists in an effort to steady herself. “Please let go of me.” 

Immediately, whoever it was obliged her. Louise stepped back as soon as the hand was gone, but she didn’t run away just yet. She had the feeling she wouldn’t be followed. Swallowing hard, she searched the darkness with wide eyes. “Who are you?” 

“A friend”, rasped the voice. “I mean you no harm.” 

“Why are you here?”, asked Louise, regaining her composure. “Did you... break in?” 

“No.” 

“Then wh— do you work here? Do I know you?”, sputtered Louise. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to call the police if you’re not supposed to be-“

“NO!”, snarled the voice, and Louise jumped before whoever it was began coughing violently. Each sounded worse than the last, and Louise wondered if this man truly was sick in some way, or perhaps just quite old. 

When it stopped, Louise heard him sigh. “There’s no need to do that.” His voice was a bit clearer now, and Louise recognized a heavy British accent. 

She nodded, then stopped, remembering he probably couldn’t see it. “Okay— but you need to tell me who you are. Now. I have a taser”, she warned, as the thought popped into her head. 

There was a dry laugh. “As I said, I’m perfectly docile. Does it look like I’m going anywhere, anyway?” 

Louise was confused, but then she turned her phone over in her hands, flicking on the light. 

She gasped. 

It... really was the animatronic. 

Before her, against the back wall of the storage room, there was an old robot, yellowish-green, propped up in a sitting position, legs splayed out in front of him. It had one long ear atop its head, the other being nearly nonexistent, a mere metal stub where the other should have been. The body and limbs of the thing were torn and raggedy, and Louise noticed that one arm was mostly gone, something smooth, white and sharp protruding from the open end. 

The animatronic’s actual face was just as decrepit, dead grey eyes only showing the dimmest rings of light still working to illuminate them. One eye was flickering ever-so-slightly. Past the outer layer, Louise was sure she could see more white pieces underneath, some parts harboring dark stains or cracks. 

It was a rabbit, Louise guessed. Or it had been, at least. She’d never seen it before. 

And underneath that rabbit... 

“Are you... stuck in that?”, Louise murmured. The realization was jarring, and she wasn’t even thinking about how she couldn’t see his skin or real eyes underneath the suit. She wasn’t thinking about how the suit smelled rotten, looked rotten, and somehow someone was still moving, speaking... 

When the thing started laughing again, Louise finally had to accept it. The robotic costume convulsed on the floor, a breathy, dry rasping coming from the head of the creature. Something underneath the mask was moving. 

Louise felt cold. 

This man wasn’t alive. 

“Of course I’m _stuck_ ”, laughed the dead man, the artificial eyes of the rabbit flicking up to meet hers in an unsettling stare. “Not to mention this bloody bar over half of me.” 

Louise glanced down. 

Indeed, positioned over the living corpse’s lap, was a huge metal bar. It curved back unevenly, bolted into the wall on both sides. It was messy, but clearly intentional. 

Had he been left to die in here?

The rabbit’s head tilted slightly as Louise stood speechless. “I know, I know. This is strange, isn’t it? I can explain it, though. All of it. Just please, be open to listening...” He paused, raising his good arm and placing it underneath the bar. “But first, I’ll need to get out from this place. Will you help me?” 

Louise almost laughed. What the hell was happening? Who was this guy, and how was he talking to her in that awful state? Had Jeff known about this? Did _Jeff_ leave him here to die? 

The man in the rabbit suit shifted on the floor, and Louise nodded without thinking, forgetting he’d asked her a question. “Yes— sorry.” 

Louise found the storage room’s lights, predictably, to be faulty, so she searched the room for a tool with only her phone’s light while the man in the suit asked her various questions about herself. 

What was her name? Where were they? Did she like her job? Did she like working with the animatronics? How old was she? Did she have any family? 

Louise was about ready to ask him to chill out when she finally found the tool she’d been looking for. With a sigh of relief, Louise pulled the tool from its box and headed back to the man’s corner of the room. Being inexperienced with power tools, it took her a bit, but with his help, she managed to destroy the bolts on one side of the metal bar, and with a clang, it sprung free from the wall, cracking the old paint and drywall in the process. 

“Wonderful job”, said the man. “I would step back.” 

Louise did. 

Grunting, the animatronic suit began to move, dragging its legs up to its chest before beginning to rise slowly to a standing position, bracing itself on the wall for support. 

The suit— the man— both of them— were very tall at full height. The remaining rabbit ear was taller than the metal shelf that had hidden him earlier, though it didn’t yet reach the high ceiling of the building. 

Louise was torn between offering to help him out of there or shrinking back in uncertain wariness. She still didn’t know this guy. 

Luckily, he seemed to perk up slightly after the heavy bar dropped to the floor with a clang. His movements seemed slightly less strained and choppy as he stretched out his newly freed limbs, and though there were audible cracks and creaks as he took a tentative step forward, it seemed he was getting his bearings rather quickly. 

Nervousness pooled in Louise’s stomach. Why hadn’t she called someone the minute she’d begin hearing noises? She really didn’t need to get involved with this. Not when it could risk her job. Not when it could risk her safety. 

Alas, she knew it was far too late to debate— she’d already spoken to whoever this man was, already agreed to help him. He was clearly in need of assistance. 

But she still didn’t have an explanation for him being here. Did Jeff truly know anything about it? 

She shuddered. It would make sense, if he’d been trying to hide this. He was adamant that no one enter this room. 

All of this begged the question: was Jeff some kind of criminal— or perhaps simply dishonest and secretive? There was no way he couldn’t have known about this mysterious man, trapped in here. _Intentionally_ trapped. 

None of this felt right. 

Louise found herself clutching her taser, hoping the man didn’t notice. She cleared her throat. “So... who exactly are you?” 

The clicking of metal joints stopped abruptly as the man in the suit regarded her question. For a moment, Louise was afraid he had fallen unconscious somehow, but then there was an audible sigh. 

“I’m a former employee of Fazbear Entertainment.” 

“ _What?!_ ” 

The man laughed hoarsely. “You’re misunderstanding me. The way I am now— that was an accident. It was a stupid error on my part. Nothing to do with you.” 

Louise wasn’t comforted. “But how did it happen? What even did happen? What’s your name?” she spluttered, realizing how blunt she was being. “Sorry, that must have sounded rude—“ 

The rabbit’s good hand waved dismissively. “All are valid questions, my dear. I understand.” He limped closer, and instead of shrinking away like she really wanted to, deep down, Louise remained where she was, watching as the man slowly extended his hand to her. “My name is Dave.” 

Louise took it, albeit a bit awkwardly, and pursed her lips. For some reason, the name didn’t match the voice of the man at all to her, but she supposed being shut inside a— _whatever_ this thing was— might mess with your vocals a bit. She breathed out cooly. “Okay. That’s a start.” 

There was a quiet chuckle from the suit. “I’m glad I could ease your worry.” Pivoting slightly, Dave turned to look past her, to where the door was, and started towards it. Louise went ahead, placed a hand on the handle, and pushed down. 

The door stuck. 

“Shit”, she muttered, messing with the handle as Dave stopped quietly beside her. 

“Do you have a key?”, he asked, and Louise could swear she felt the air shift around her, like the man had somehow breathed on her skin. 

Her brow furrowed. “Yes, but... I can’t feel a keyhole anywhere”, she replied, with a steadily growing a sense of dread. She didn’t want to be stuck in the one room where she was told not to go.

Dave must have sensed her distress, because Louise felt a rough robotic hand alight briefly on her shoulder before moving away. “It’s all right. Someone will come and let you out, won’t they?” Louise heard notes of what sounded like concern in the man’s voice, which she was beginning to get used to. 

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Let’s just... wait it out, then”, she said, and turned back, sliding her hand along a wall to find a free spot to sit. 

Dave didn’t respond. She heard his suit click as he turned his body to face her, as if he was going to say something else, but he simply looked at her before walking past and further into the darkness. Seconds later, the sounds of shuffling and grating told Louise he’d found a place of his own to wait. 

The silence in the room was getting worse and worse. Truth be told, she was still wary of the strange man in the suit. Her mother had always taught her to be cautious and vigilant, and now, here she was, shut in a room with a strange man, who, for all she knew, could be bad news. 

Hah. As if this whole situation wasn’t bad news enough. She was so fired. What would Jeff even say? Would he understand? 

Louise bit at her nails. What if Jeff didn’t let her out of here? Had this same thing happened to Dave, too? 

“Hey, uh, Dave?”, Louise piped up. “How... how did you get stuck in that thing?” 

“Well, I climbed into it, first of all”, said Dave. 

Louise made a face. “What? How? And _why?_ ” 

She heard him shift his position. “It’s a special kind of animatronic. It’s designed to function as a robot _and_ a costume.” 

Was that a twinge of pride in his voice? Louise found her curiosity beginning to outweigh her anxiety. “Did you... make it?” 

“Quick, aren’t you? I did help make it, yes. I was an engineer in the company”, said Dave. “I made it, I climbed into it, and I— misused it.” 

He was silent for a bit, and the only sounds Louise could hear were the whirring of the building’s cooling system and the sound of her own breathing. 

She thought back to when she’d first shone her light on the raggedy old suit. She’d seen bits of bone there, hadn’t she? 

“You died”, she said, almost inaudibly. “I didn’t see any of... your skin left.” She felt nauseous as she said it, and a bit crazy, but she believed it. 

“Yes.” 

The room felt suddenly very cold. Louise rubbed her arms. “Do you remember it?” 

“Yes”, Dave replied. “It hurt.” 

“I’m sorry”, said Louise, because she didn’t really know what else she could say to that. It should be impossible to be talking to this guy, and yet, she was. Had the animatronic suit somehow kept him— animated? 

Louise decided then that she didn’t want to delve any further into it. She was tired, cold, and sorely missing her bed at home. The cement floor was sucking all of her warmth away, and the wall was hard against her back. 

“Dave?”, Louise said into the darkness. “What will you do when they come in the morning? Would the hospital be able to help you?” 

“I won’t be going there”, said Dave, after a moment. “There isn’t a point to it.” 

“Oh.” Louise yawned, covering her mouth, though she figured Dave could probably hear her anyway. She knew she shouldn’t fall asleep around a stranger, but what else could she do? 

The relief of unconsciousness enveloped her soon after, and Louise’s last thought before she let her muscles go slack was about what she would tell her mother after she was fired in the morning.


	6. Stowaway

Louise was startled awake by the sound of a key in a lock. Momentarily, she didn’t know where she was, and started to panic— but then she remembered: she was in the storage room. 

And she wasn’t alone. 

She glanced around, trying to scan the room. It was just as dark as it had been the night before, so she couldn’t see very far. She was about to turn on her phone flashlight to look for Dave when the door swung open. 

“Louise?” It was her mother’s voice. Her eyes widened as she saw a group of three people at the door— Jeff, Marty, and her mother. She couldn’t read Jeff’s expression, but Marty and her mother looked bewildered. 

Louise got to her feet, brushing off her jeans. “Hey, Mom...” 

Her mother practically leapt into the room, grabbing her by the arms. “Louise, what happened? Are you alright? You didn’t come home, you didn’t call—“ 

“I’m fine, Mom. I got locked in, is all”, said Louise, aware of both of her coworkers staring at her. 

Trying not to shake, she pulled away from her mother, smiling weakly. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I’m fine, really.” 

Her mother hesitated, looking somewhere between angry and scared, and then nodded, biting her lip. “I’ll let you talk to them. I’ll be outside in the car if you need me.” 

Louise mimicked her mother’s nod. “See you.” 

When her mom had left down the corridor, Marty stepped forward. “Dude, what happened? I was freaking out when I saw your car and didn’t see you this morning.” He didn’t look angry, just worried. 

Louise was about to reassure him when Jeff put a hand on Marty’s shoulder. “I need a moment to speak to her, please.” 

Marty sighed, but didn’t argue, watching as Jeff silently beckoned for Louise to follow him out. She took one last glance around the room for Dave before she complied, wondering if she should say anything. 

The trip down the corridor to Jeff’s office felt like forever. Louise tried to focus on her own feet. She had the distinct sense that Jeff would react poorly to hearing about Dave. 

Was she really prepared to lie about it? 

“Please come in”, said Jeff as he opened the office door. Louise bowed her head slightly as she entered, embarrassed. She felt like a little kid. 

“You can sit down, Louise”, Jeff reminded her as he passed her on the way to his desk. “I’d like you to explain what happened last night.” His voice was even and cool. Louise wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. 

She shifted in the chair. “I— I thought I heard a noise from there last night.” Something flashed in her manager’s eyes and she rushed to add, “A burst pipe, I thought. Maybe a gas leak or something. I thought it might be urgent.” 

Jeff visibly relaxed. Louise swallowed down her growing sense of anxiety and smiled at her manager. “I know, it’s off limits, but I didn’t want to risk letting something bad happen. It won’t happen again.” 

“I understand why you did it”, Jeff said, folding his hands together. “It’s admirable that you wanted to help, but please call me next time, okay? You could have hurt yourself. It’s dark in there.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

On the drive home, Louise’s mother gave her a gentle lecture about communication. Louise took it in stride. It all, clearly, could have been much worse. 

More pressingly, she knew she hadn’t just dreamt up Dave. How long had he been in there? There was no doubt in her mind that Jeff had known about him being there, with the way her manager had acted back in the office. She couldn’t trust his word anymore. It was a scary thought— not to mention the near-certainty that Jeff had kept the man back there in the hopes he wouldn’t be able to get out. 

The thought of Dave kept Louise up that night. He had refused the hospital, and she could see why, but couldn’t she at least inform the police? Dave was a hostage— or a victim of some crime, something that Jeff was trying to cover up in that storage room. Louise knew that if she wanted to help that poor man, she would have to keep it from Jeff. Marty, too. As a matter of fact, she didn’t think she could trust anyone there anymore. This was all just too shady. 

The next day, Louise decided to come in early. The parking lot was completely empty. She had her own set of keys that Jeff had given her, which she used to let herself in, still careful to be quiet despite Jeff’s car being absent. 

She set down her things in the employee lounge, making sure to text her mother to confirm she’d made it there safely, and immediately set off down the corridor. 

Outside of storage, she stopped, looking around. There were security cameras throughout the restaurant, but the nearest one was in the kitchen. 

Still, she was thorough. Best not to risk it. When Louise was satisfied that she wasn’t being watched, she pulled out the universal key, turned it in the lock, and pushed the door open. 

“Hello?”, she called into the room, propping the door open with a nearby box. “It’s, uh, it’s Louise. I’m back.” 

There was no response. 

Louise sighed and pulled out her phone, switching on the flashlight. 

It revealed nothing out of the ordinary. She couldn’t make out the decrepit animatronic suit anywhere. Had Dave gone back to where she’d found him behind the shelves? She headed over. 

Again, nothing. Where on Earth could he have gone? This door was always locked. 

Louise felt a shiver go down her spine. She prayed that the man hadn’t been deceiving her. She prayed he didn’t have bad intentions. She prayed he wasn’t hiding, waiting for her to return, so he could spring out when her back was turned— 

Louise gasped as her light revealed a dark opening in a nearby wall that she hadn’t noticed before. It was perfectly square, and from what she could make out of the inside, it was all metal. It looked a bit like a garbage chute— but then Louise noticed the torn bits of a grate on the edges. Was this part of the ventilation system? 

A breath escaped her lungs. Right— it was exactly like the openings in the upstairs office that she’s crawled through. It was certainly large enough to fit an adult, even if that adult was stuck in an animatronic costume. 

Louise felt a pang of guilt; had Dave been afraid that Jeff would find him? Maybe he was waiting for Louise to come and help him. Tentatively, she stepped closer, just a foot or so from the vent, and shone her light in. “Hello? Dave?” 

A small clang came from somewhere in the vent, and then what sounded like shuffling. Louise waited for a moment until the rabbit’s head poked around a corner in the vent, turning to look at her. 

“You’re back.” 

She nodded. “No one’s here but me.” Louise paused, hesitating. “I— I can get you out of here, if you want.” 

Dave leaned on his good arm. “You sound worried.” 

“I am. I mean— I don’t know you and all, but I also don’t know what J— what my manager isn’t telling me. Someone locked you there on purpose”, Louise sputtered. She really didn’t want to start any trouble, but at the same time, she couldn’t live with just leaving this man alone in here. If she could get him free without anyone knowing, she’d do a good deed without having to pay the price of Jeff’s knowledge of her actions. 

Dave crawled forward, hauling himself around the corner. Louise took a small step to the side to allow him to climb out. When he did, suit clicking and whirring, he didn’t move. 

“Louise, I understand your concern. And I appreciate your willingness to help me despite not knowing much about me.” One of the animatronic’s blank eyes blinked erratically for a second before Dave shook his head to stop it. “But I simply need to have a way out. There’s no need to get me out of the building.” 

Louise made a face. “You don’t want to leave?” 

“I don’t have anywhere else to go”, Dave chuckled, coughing a little. “I don’t even know where I am.” 

“Hurricane”, said Louise. “Hurricane, Utah. You’re in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.” 

Dave made a small noise of recognition. “Really? I’m in Freddy’s?” 

“You know it?” 

He laughed again, sharply. “Not this location— unless they’ve rebuilt over the old one, which may very well be the case. The first location was in Hurricane as well. I’ve already mentioned I worked with Fazbear Entertainment.” 

Louise turned off her phone light, pocketing the device. “Right. Well— is there anything else I can do to help you? Do you, uh... need to eat?” 

She immediately felt stupid for asking when the man cocked his head at her, but he didn’t laugh, to her relief. He simply shook his head, making the rabbit’s remaining ear click and bob with the motion. 

Louise glanced at the door. “Uh, I guess I’ll just get started on my morning tasks, then. Marty— my coworker— he isn’t supposed to come in for another couple hours, so no one would... see you.”

“Are you asking me to come with you?” 

“Um”, Louise stuttered. “If you want to. It would be less boring than hiding in a vent.” She made an attempt at a smile. 

Dave shrugged, a minuscule motion in the withered old costume. “I suppose it’d be nice to walk around.” 

The journey through the corridor was bizarre, and almost comical, to Louise. The absurdity and impossibility of the situation was too weird to get used to, and the constant scuff-scrape of Dave’s robotic footsteps behind her was so inhuman that she would sometimes forget she wasn’t alone. 

Louise led the restaurant’s stowaway to the employee lounge first, as it was directly down the hall. She didn’t bother pointing out Jeff’s office as they went by. 

“Here’s the lounge”, she said when she opened the door and flipped down the kickstand. 

Dave stopped just after crossing through the doorway. “Are you sure?” 

Louise blinked. “Uh, yes. What do you mean...?”

The man went further into the room, veering left, towards one of the tall wooden walls. 

He raised his right arm to touch it before turning back to her. “I know these walls.” 

“Huh?” 

“This”, said Dave, gesturing around the room, “is where the private dining room used to be. I remember.” 

Private dining room? That sounded just a shade too fancy for a pizzeria. Louise mirrored him, coming up to the wall and sliding her palm against its polished wooden surface. 

Dave was looking at her. “Before your time, I imagine.” 

She just nodded and dropped her hand. “What was before Freddy’s?” 

“Fredbear’s”, he responded. “It was a diner. Lovely place in its prime.” 

Pausing to take in the information, Louise gathered up the courage to ask her next question. She wasn’t sure Dave would be so keen to answer it. 

“Why were you being... _kept_ in there?” 

“So I wouldn’t leave”, said Dave, who chuckled at his own joke for a moment before waving a hand. “Well, that, and I take it that your manager didn’t want to be responsible for a walking corpse.” 

Louise nodded, but she felt as if there was more to this. “Did Jeff find you like this?” 

“Honestly, I have no idea”, Dave replied. “I don’t remember being taken here, or going here myself. The last place I was in burned down a good while ago.” 

“Oh...”, said Louise. Dave’s past seemed more complicated the more she delved into it. She swung her arms. “Want to see what else is new around here?” 

It took a little over an hour for Louise to walk her newfound companion through the entirety of the restaurant. Dave seemed to approve of certain changes, like Rockstar Foxy’s Pirate Cove, but would occasionally comment a criticism, either with the building’s architecture or with the animatronics themselves. 

Speaking of, it seemed like Louise had lucked out: all of the stage spots were filled by dormant robots, and the backstage area housed Rockstar Bonnie and Funtime Chica, who was standing silently beside one of the decorative mirrors. Dave lingered around Chica for a bit longer than any of the others, and, strangely, did not provide any criticism of its design, as he had for nearly all of the others. Louise guessed he might already have a favorite. 

It was about twenty minutes before Marty was supposed to arrive when Louise heard a knock at one of the dining room’s main doors. She had been about to usher Dave back. They both whirled to face the noise. Through the fogged glass of the door, Louise could make out a silhouette, no doubt her coworker waiting to be let in. 

She squinted. Was Marty right near the door? He looked shorter than he usually stood. 

“Louise?”, Dave asked. 

“Right. Sorry. Can you get back okay? The door’s still propped open.” 

Dave gave her a thumbs-up sign with his good hand and began limping away towards the corridor. Louise waited until he’d disappeared around the corner to approach the dining room door, searching for the right key. 

When she opened it, she was met with Sarah, her new coworker. Louise’s eyes widened. “Oh, good morning!” 

Sarah smiled and nodded. “Last-minute switch up! Jeff tells me Marty isn’t feeling well, so he called me so I could fill in.” 

“Oh, okay”, Louise said, slightly relieved. If Dave made some noise in the other room, she figured that Sarah wouldn’t be able to tell it apart from the rest of the building’s noises. 

At least, she hoped not. 

The day went smoothly and without issues. Louise watched Sarah follow Jeff and one of the servers around to gather information, always looking eager and open. 

Louise wished she could feel like that again. Since discovering Dave and the condition he was in, she hadn’t been able to look Jeff in the eyes for very long unless she was required to. He’d kept this from everyone. 

In fact, she still wasn’t convinced that Jeff hadn’t caused Dave’s death. Who knew? It was crazy; Louise actually trusted Dave, a dead stranger, more than she did her own manager. Maybe it was the rabbit suit. 

Okay, well... not really. That thing was pretty torn up.

Louise decided to take her break a little bit before she was due to clock out. The pizzeria’s busy environment had kept her occupied for a good while, so she hadn’t really gotten tired until later in the shift. 

Sitting in the lounge, Louise ate the sandwich she’d packed herself that morning in slow bites, picking absently at a marker stain on the surface of the table she was at. 

The door to the corridor swung open to her left. It was Sarah. Her brown hair was slightly messy, probably from all that running around she’d been doing, but she looked as chipper as ever as she came and sat next to Louise. 

“Heya”, she breathed. 

Louise waved a hand. “Tired?” 

“Just a little”, Sarah panted, a goofy smile on her face that Louise couldn’t help but return. “Jeff says I’m doing really well so far!” 

“That’s great!”, said Louise. 

Sarah beamed. “Thanks! I was honestly nervous I’d be too overwhelmed, but here I am, just a regular cog in the machine, huh?”

The kitchen door opened from behind them. Louise turned to look— one of the chefs had set a large metal plate on the marble counter situated behind where they were sitting. The older woman made a brief gesture to it, waved, and ducked back into the kitchen. 

“Ooh”, said Sarah, getting up. “Looks like they had extra pizza. You want a slice?” 

Louise shrugged, noting that she had one bite of her sandwich left and didn’t really feel full. “Why not.” 

As the two sat in comfortable silence, Louise’s eyes fell on Sarah’s hand, resting on the tabletop. She’d done her nails so neatly— they were shaped perfectly and painted with a pleasant, soft pink. 

Louise tried to remember the last time she’d gone out for a manicure. She should really take some more time for herself, but then again, she really wanted to get through school right now. 

She sighed. Maybe she could find a balance somehow. It was obvious that this job had been instrumental in boosting her income, as well as her and her mother’s quality of life as a result. Jeff, secretive or not, paid generously, always willing to add hours or adjust schedules to his employee’s needs. Louise simply couldn’t afford to leave this place right now. Not when she was doing so well. 

The thought only slightly quelled the guilt she felt about Dave being trapped here. He probably didn’t have any family left. This was his only place to go, and it wasn’t even safe for him. 

Well... nothing was safe for him, Louise remembered. He wasn’t technically alive. That whole dilemma was still absolutely mind-boggling. She’d heard of unlikely miracles, but reanimation? Never. Not to mention the fact that he could still speak and think. Louise wondered if it were even medically possible to remove him from that suit, or if he’d just fade away with nothing there to support him.

Louise left a few minutes after finishing her food, bidding goodbye to Sarah, who gave her a friendly nod, and to the kitchen staff, who all gave her pats on the back or waved as she politely weaved her way through them to the dining room. She didn’t see Jeff on her way out. 

Later that night, Louise reflected on her conversations with Dave. Would it be a good idea to give him a way to talk to her when she wasn’t there? 

She glanced at her nightstand drawer, where her old phone was. She’d wiped it when she’d switched to a better model, but it was still able to call and text. She was even sure that the camera still worked. 

The only problem with that, though, was that it was a touchscreen phone. Louise had only seen Dave’s suit used in place of his hand, and since the skin on his actual hands was long gone, there was no way he’d be able to use the screen of this thing. 

“Hey, Mom”, Louise called into the kitchen in the morning. “Do you still have those old winter gloves you bought to use with your phone?” 

Her mother poked her head out from the kitchen. “In my closet. Why? You want them?” 

“Uh, yes”, said Louise. “It’s cold at work. My hands get stiff.” 

Funnily enough, Sarah was there in the morning to greet her when she showed up, sitting at one of the dining room tables with her hands folded. 

She stood and smiled when Louise walked in. “Morning! I was hoping you could answer a question for me, if you don’t mind?” 

The expression on her face was earnest, not worried, so Louise cautiously assumed that her coworker hadn’t randomly run into Dave before she’d got there. Louise agreed and followed Sarah to the backstage room, where Funtime Chica and Rockstar Bonnie were, as usual. 

Louise expected her to stare at the huge metal creatures, like most people did, but Sarah was pointing to something on Chica’s forearm, something written in fine black print. 

“Do you know what this is?” 

Louise came closer to look. “Afton Robotics? It’s the manufacturer.” 

Sarah nodded. “Yes. I was just wondering if you knew anything about the company? Jeff said he didn’t, but... you’ve always seemed to have a way with the animatronics.” 

She hadn’t expected this question at all. It was definitely an odd one to ask— the manufacturer, of all things? Louise remembered being starstruck by the robots’ designs and mobility alone. Oh well. Maybe Sarah was just curious about their origins. 

Louise nodded. “I know a little bit. I researched them before I started working here, actually.” 

“Really?”, Sarah asked. “What about them? Where are they located?” 

Louise put up a hand. “Hold on. I don’t know that much”, she laughed. “I just know that Afton Robotics is somehow affiliated with Fazbear Entertainment. It’s all kind of... complicated.” 

Sarah was still staring at her, listening intently. 

Louise felt her cheeks heat up. “Uh— so— Afton Robotics produced and regulated animatronic attractions for one of their old restaurants. They were affiliated with Freddy’s, but I think it was a little different, like their own separate chain, maybe.” 

Sarah blinked, finally, and looked down at the floor. There was an unreadable expression on her face, but it was gone before Louise could identify it. “Were there ever any trashed attractions? Like... ones that didn’t make the cut?” 

Louise shrugged. “I mean, probably. Most businesses have concepts they don’t follow through on. I’d imagine a robotics company might’ve had unfinished projects and prototypes, stuff like that.” 

“Prototypes”, Sarah echoed. She glanced up at Louise, smiling. “That’s really cool— thank you for telling me. I was just curious, the robots are just so interesting, aren’t they?” 

Louise nodded, perplexed, but in agreement. “Yeah, they’re fascinating.” She jerked a thumb back towards the entrance to backstage. “Wanna help me activate one?”


	7. Reunited

William was starting to feel like he was on autopilot. 

Every day since he’d been freed by that naive employee, he’d had to block out the raucous sounds of giggling, the tiny, innocent voices of countless energetic children, running around what he now knew to be the new Freddy’s. 

It was pure torture. All of his instincts told him he needed to be out there, in costume, charming up a few kids, but he couldn’t leave the accursed storage room, except for the vents, which only served to make his mania worse by giving him a better visual and auditory perspective of the busy restaurant. 

He soon determined that it was better to stay in the storage room, but lately, he’d had trouble listening to his own mind. The suit that held William’s mangled body was programmed to seek out children to entertain, and, combined with his craving for cruelty, it was nearly impossible to resist crawling into the vents to eavesdrop on the sounds of the day. 

It was with no amount of pride that William knew he didn’t have a plan. Not yet, at least. He didn’t know why he was here or when he’d arrived— crucial information that he might never obtain. 

Christ, he was barely functional anymore, what with the constant pain of his existence and damaged or missing limbs. 

He really ought to find a way out of this. 

Yes— that was it! _That_ was his plan, and this was the first step. He couldn’t think in this thing, so he needed to get out. 

Obviously, Louise, the young woman who was trying to ‘help’ him, was not an ideal candidate for this. Extracting William’s physical body from this suit and transferring him into something more stable was a process that required surgical levels of precision skills and a good set of reflexes. 

William wasn’t entirely sure that Louise had any of that, whether she’d agreed to help him or not. He sighed in his animatronic prison, slumped against the wall of the storage room. He wished he knew where any of his creations were, apart from the Chica animatronic he’d seen in the restaurant’s backstage area. 

Had the originals all since been destroyed? Surely, by now, someone would have discovered some shred of evidence, some little bloodstain. Any sort of detail William had overlooked would be glaringly obvious for someone who was looking for something suspicious. 

Not that he cared. They wouldn’t find him. He was dead. His franchise, in his opinion, was dead, too, no matter how much the parent company tried to milk it for ideas. The original diner itself was long forgotten. 

William felt a cold fury at the thought of Fredbear’s— and the thought of Henry. That selfish bastard. He’d had it so good. _Too_ good. 

Where was William’s credit? Where were the customers asking to talk to _him?_

Henry hadn’t even dressed formally for large gatherings or parties. He’d been sloppy, but of course, that had still drawn people in. They’d all flocked to him... 

He shook his head. This was doing him no good. 

Something hissed from a nearby room, making William tense, listening. 

_Ah, wait_ , he thought. _I’ve got these wonderful little passageways to use_. 

The vents, as usual, were dark and echoey as William crawled towards the sound. He hadn’t really ventured anywhere else in the building, except for right above the dining room so that he could listen in. This trip was much shorter, only a room away, it seemed like, as William reached a grate in the next room’s ceiling and leaned down to listen again. 

There it was! A harsh hissing noise, unmistakably electric by the way it sputtered at the end. Perhaps a loose wire? William tried to make out shapes in the room, but it was even darker than his storage room had been. Even the animatronic suit’s visual system was failing to register anything below him as something recognizable. He slammed his fist into the bottom of the vent in frustration. 

Something lit up beneath him right away, as if it had heard him. There was another electric spark, and William saw a beady yellow light, aimed straight up at the ceiling to where he was. He waited. 

“H-h-heyyyy!”, whined a familiar voice. “What a surprise!” 

_Freddy?_

William didn’t respond to it. It was clearly the voice of one of his animatronics, Funtime Freddy; a high-pitched, high-strung pink and white bear with a top hat and a symmetrically split face. 

But something was... different about it now. Was it a recording? Was this “Jeff” trying to lure him out of hiding? 

Something dragged on the floor beneath him, making the yellow beam of light shift, darting around the room, as if searching for him. Curious, he held still again. 

More dragging. The light panned down, over what looked like a tangle of wires and metal tubing— and was that an animatronic eye? Before he could confirm, the light moved again to land back on the ceiling, directly where his vent was. William looked away. 

“I _seeeeee_ you!”, sang the voice. “What’s the matter, don’t’cha want us anymore?” 

“Want _who?_ ”, he grunted. Might as well respond if it was just going to pester him. 

“Why, your creations, of course!”, said the voice. There was a whirring noise, and then a rich, booming voice said, “We won’t soon be forgotten!” 

_Foxy_ , thought William. “How many of you are down there?” 

“Just us few”, said a female voice, slower and calmer than the others. “We have waited here for you.” 

“Where’s Baby?”, asked William, suddenly desperate to talk to her. “Is she down there?” 

Funtime Freddy let out a loud cackle. “What a party-pooper!” 

William growled, impatient. “Tell me where she is.” 

It was Ballora’s voice who spoke next. “We do not know. She left us. We told her to leave.” 

“Why?!”, William exclaimed in disbelief. “What on earth would have prompted—dammit. Never mind”, he sighed, knowing they’d just be vague about it.  
“Tell me, then. Why are you all here?” 

•••

Louise was tense today. Jeff kept leaving the public areas to “take a call” in his office, but he didn’t share who he was calling. Marty had shrugged it off, and so had most of Louise’s fellow staff, but since she knew about Dave, she couldn’t help but worry about it. 

A cold shock went through her as she bent down to wipe a table. 

What about Dennis? Had Jeff had something to do with _his_ disappearance, too? 

Then again, Jeff had seemed truly distraught over the whole incident, but maybe he was just a good liar. 

Damn. Louise hated this— all this conspiracy and anxiety. Selfishly, she almost wished she’d never gone into that storage room and gotten burdened with all of this confusing knowledge in the first place. She still didn’t even know the full story. 

But, of course, the more rational part of her knew that she couldn’t take back the past. She was going to have to deal with this as best as she could, and as safely as possible. 

Unfortunately, that meant lying to her coworkers and mother, which made her heart hurt, but she would have felt far worse had she involved her mother with any of this. There was always the possibility that such information could put her at risk. 

“Louise!”, someone called. 

Louise glanced up to see Jeff standing in the entrance to the side corridor, leaning against the wall. He was wearing his reading glasses and holding a clipboard. He waved as she met his eyes and she waved back, setting down the rag she’d been using and jogging over to her manager. 

“What’s up?” 

Jeff was squinting as he looked at something on the paper. “I’m going to ask a favor of you, but it’s up to you to accept it or not.” He looked concerned. 

Louise shrugged. “All right, what’s the favor?” 

“The technician we were expecting this weekend had something come up for him. Marty has to leave early today, and I have to meet someone after we close”, Jeff began, meeting her eyes. He took a deep breath. 

Louise became a bit nervous. If he wanted her to work overtime, she’d accept. It might give her an opportunity to help Dave somehow. So why did Jeff seem so off about this? She’d worked longer before, hadn’t she? 

“If you accept what I’m offering you, your pay will be compensated accordingly”, said Jeff. “Not just this once. I’ll pay you more from here on out if you can regularly do this.”

Now Louise was really nervous. He still hadn’t told her what it was he was asking for. “Okay...?” 

Jeff let out a short laugh. “Sorry. What I’m asking you to do is watch the place tonight.” 

Louise nearly laughed right along with him. “Okay, I’ll accept, then. No biggie.” She couldn’t hold back the puzzled smile on her face. 

But then Jeff put out a hand. 

“That... that isn’t all.” 

Louise stepped to the side to allow one of the servers to pass her and enter the kitchen. “Oh?” 

“I’m currently trying to— er— repurpose something. Something... old.” 

Louise stiffened. Was he talking about Dave? 

What did he mean by ‘repurpose’? Maybe he really didn’t know about Dave being in that suit. Should she say something? 

No— she didn’t know anything for sure. 

Louise chewed the inside of her lip. “What are you trying to repurpose?” 

Her manager shook his head. “That’s the thing. If I explain it all to you, I just need to know that you’ll be... discrete. And that includes your family.” 

“Listen, Jeff, I’ll accept it as long as it’s not illegal”, she joked, smile fading when he didn’t laugh along. She cleared her throat. “It’s not, is it?” 

“No!”, Jeff spluttered. “No. Not at all. I’m sorry— it’s just a sensitive matter at the moment.” 

“Okay then”, Louise breathed. “Whatever it is, then, I’m in.” 

•••

Her mission for the night had been simple: watch the animatronic in this room. 

That was it. No repairing, salvaging, or recovery. Absolutely no interaction at all. Nothing but her steady vigilance until the technician came in the morning to take over for her. 

It was understandable, still, that Jeff had been hesitant to ask this of her. She understood now.  
Though her task was simple enough to carry out, Jeff had told her all of the risks involved with the faulty animatronic. It could damage itself, the building, or even her by its sheer weight alone, although that third option was unlikely, with the thing being heavily restrained. 

...Still, though. High-risk indeed. 

The room she was in was nearly an exact replica of the storage room that she’d found Dave in. It was accessible from the stair room, which was the small space before the entrance to the stairs. 

The stairs themselves led down to a restricted area, even further underground than the main floor of the pizzeria. Louise didn’t know what was down there... not yet. 

She wondered how many claustrophobic little spaces the building harbored. Were there others like Dave here, too? 

Jeff hadn’t mentioned Dave, but Louis hoped it was for the same reason. She hoped that Dave’s death had been an accident, she really did. She wanted more than anything to be able to trust her boss again— but she was no fool. She’d be cautious until she knew for sure. 

The night was going smoothly thus far, anyway. It was almost boring if not for the slight twinge of curiosity Louise got every time she glanced over at the inactive animatronic in the corner. She pulled out her cell phone and began scrolling through her social media pages, glancing up to check on the robot every few minutes until she was confident the thing wouldn’t be moving any time soon. 

Of course, that didn’t last long— and with no outlet to be seen in the room, Louise was forced to conserve her battery and turn off her phone for brief periods. She needed to have a way to contact her mother and coworkers; it was out of the question to go dark on anyone now. Especially after the incident with the storage room. 

Louise yawned, peering over at the robot again. She’d never actually gotten a good look at it, but then again, it was dark in there, the only light coming from a single warm bulb in the center of the room. 

Scanning the immobile shape, Louise was reminded of the animatronics that she was around in her usual line of work. Instead of being soft and torn, like Dave’s suit, this was a mess of parts, hardly resembling a typical animatronic at all. 

Grunting at the stiffness in her knees, Louise stood slowly, phone in hand. It wouldn’t harm anyone to get a bit of a closer look. 

She was careful not to come within body-length of it as she illuminated the object. 

“Lefty?!”, she gasped. The one-eyed black bear was slumped against the wall, shiny and colorful as always. Why was it back here? 

Louise sighed. Did it really matter? She’d be done soon, and she really didn’t want to ‘activate’ this thing like she’d done with Dave. She shivered and walked away. 

The following morning, Jeff arrived early, sending her a text that he was there just as Louise was about to nod off. 

She took in a breath, trying to shake herself awake, and began to gather her things. It was a miracle the text had managed to reach her down here— the reception in the restaurant was already shoddy enough, one of the downsides of being under a good deal of dirt and concrete. It honestly surprised her that customers hardly mentioned it. 

Jeff was sitting on one of the stages when Louise finally arrived at the main dining area. She gave him a wave as she left, which he returned before glancing back down at a pile of papers on his lap. 

Her mother was reading a book when she came in, bouncing her leg, which was an uncommon habit of hers. She never expended excess energy like that— she didn’t _have_ excess energy most days. 

Louise laughed, slightly out of breath from her trip up the stairs to their apartment. “Book’s that thrilling, huh?” 

Her mother looked up, closing it almost at once. “How was work?” 

The young woman shrugged. “Nothing too crazy. I’m probably going right to bed since I’m gonna be taking the later shift tomorrow anyway.” 

“Have you eaten yet?”, asked her mother, and Louise realized she hadn’t. She’d only been able to pack herself a sandwich and a bag of chips to get her through the night. 

Louise shook her head, avoiding her mother’s eyes. “Not since the stuff I packed.” 

Nancy was frowning. This job, however beneficial it was for them, was clearly a lot of commitment and energy for Louise to be taking on. Not that she couldn’t handle it— Nancy knew how strong her daughter was— it was just that Louise deserved to go at an easier pace. They were okay right now, they really were. She could take a week off, maybe, spend some time at home. She barely had enough time nowadays to squeeze in time to look for colleges. 

Well. By the time Louise got into college, she’d surely have to cut down on her hours. Right? 

Nancy sighed, trying to soothe her thoughts. “At least have some of the chili I made the other day. There’s still a whole container of it in the fridge.” 

She was relieved when Louise nodded. 

•••

Despite Jeff’s prior assurance that the ‘shift’ she’d covered last night would most likely be a one-time occurrence, he breached the subject with her again that afternoon. 

The discussion had begun normally— just asking how she’d handled it, if she was feeling rested, et cetera. Nothing Louise hadn’t expected him to ask her about. 

But then he asked her to help out again. Of course, he was insistent that it was optional, but from his tone and the look in his eyes, he desperately needed her to accept the shift again. 

Only slightly anxious, Louise did, albeit feeling guilty for doing so without first consulting her mother. She sent the woman a brief text and hoped that would be enough for now. 

Jeff let her go home until about an hour before Freddy’s closed, where he met her outside, handed her a set of keys, and thanked her profusely before walking to his car. 

Louise was nervous about tonight. The sky looked dark, like rain, and she knew that the building’s surface level, located right over the restaurant itself, was devoted to the power supply and generators. If the power went out on the surface, it would cut out for the lower levels as well immediately after. 

Marty had mentioned an incident about a year ago when they’d had to close prematurely— the electronic interference from the storm, combined with a power outage, had made some of the performing animatronics go haywire, falling over and spazzing out, sparking at their seams. They’d evacuated the customers, of course. Louise hated to think of what sorts of terrible accidents might have befallen an innocent parent or child with all of that chaos in one place. 

She was trying not to think about all that, though. There was hardly a reason to worry, anyway: the building had since been reinforced along with the addition of nearby lightning rods to divert any stray bolts to a safer outlet than the electrical building. 

Tonight, Louise had been asked to stay in the room adjacent to the one she’d been in the previous night. 

It was actually on the way to that other room— she’d walked through it to access the second one, but she hadn’t really seen what was in the first one. It had been dark, and she’d been following Jeff, trying not to trip over anything, so she hadn’t noticed any details, even on her way out later that morning. 

Now, she saw that this first room was nearly identical to the second, the only major difference she could see being the lack of a lightbulb or a wooden table in the center of the room. This room was totally dark. 

She didn’t know if the light was out or if it was intentional, for whatever reason, but she was glad for her phone’s flashlight as she carefully locked the heavy metal door behind her with one of the keys she’d been given. 

Panning the light around, Louise found a near-empty storage shelf at the back left corner, a few stray metallic scraps lying here and there, and what seemed to be a massive pile of metal junk and parts stacked against the adjoining wall. 

The pile itself was coiled around a sturdy-looking metal pole that extended from floor to ceiling. There were also several bolts with chains woven in haphazardly, the bolts hammered messily into the ground and wall in various places. 

Louise didn’t know what to make of it, but since there apparently wasn’t an animatronic in the room this time, she relaxed, setting down her bag and taking a seat on the cool cement floor. 

•••

It was a busy Monday morning at the restaurant when Louise next stopped in. Because of her willingness to take two consecutive night shifts, Jeff had given her some time off and a thank-you call. She’d taken the extra time to help her mother around the house, getting rid of clutter and getting a few more college applications in while she had the opportunity. 

She’d actually been emailed back by two already, but they were a bit far, so she was waiting to see if she could land herself a scholarship at something that would let her be close to her mother. 

Close to work, too, if she was being honest. This job was essential, more so than ever, especially if she wanted to pursue an education. Shady business aside, Louise knew she needed this right now. She still trusted that Jeff would at least be consistent in providing her with ample work. 

Today had been a steady success so far. Valentine’s Day was coming up and the whole place was pinked-out: pink lights, pink-and-red napkins, heart-patterned tablecloths— the list went on. Funtime Chica had performed for a week straight as of today, which didn’t surprise Louise. The animatronic bird was practically the embodiment of sweetness and spring cheer. 

Her earpiece beeped. “Louise?” It was Jeff. 

She clicked the microphone button on her walkie, stepping out of the way of a pack of rambunctious kids. “What’s up?” 

“Can you do something for me? Marty isn’t here yet and the others are currently taking care of tables.” 

Louise nodded, although he probably couldn’t see. “Sure thing, what do you need?” 

“I just need you to grab a box for me.” There was a long pause that Louise nearly responded in, but Jeff finally buzzed her again— “It’s downstairs.” 

Downstairs? The bottom level? 

Louise frowned, resisting the urge to question it. She’d only ever seen the workers who retrieved shipment venture down there, and they always went in groups, usually wearing hard hats and tool belts. There was a bright orange sign before the entrance to the stairs— AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. It had always seemed like a place she’d never get to see. 

“Okay”, she replied. “Where will it be?” 

“As you exit the stairs, go right until you see the hallway. Go left, there should be a few crates just past the yellow and black caution lines. It’s safe now, the lift isn’t on. Grab the sauces. You’ll see the label.” 

“Got it”, said Louise. “And where do you want it?” 

“Just leave it in the break room by the kitchen. Thank you.” 

Louise swung her arms loosely as she made her way down the lengthy corridor, past Jeff’s office, past storage, and finally around a bend, where she’d been a few times before to help clean up the two private party rooms to her left. 

At the end of this shorter hallway, the last door on the right was marked by the telltale orange warning sign, a detail Louise had gotten used to after a couple times of passing through to get to the rooms where she’d been during the nights. 

The floor of the room past the sign had a space in the middle made of a thick layer of glass, where a spiraling metal staircase descended down into the bottom level of the facility. Louise knelt down to re-tie her shoelaces before she started down. Better safe than sorry. 

It was jarringly cold on the way down. There were, worryingly, no guiding lights to help her see where she was stepping, and no guard rail to prevent her from falling off, so she stuck to the wall, using her phone light to navigate the first thin metal steps. 

Then, she stopped: there was a harsh clang from beneath her. 

Her heart jolted in her chest. These stairs looked so flimsy. Maybe she should walk more slowly. 

_Clang!_

Louise sucked in a breath. That had been much louder. There was no way she’d done that. 

Trying her best to be quiet, Louise turned off her flashlight, crouching down on the stair-step. She waited for her eyes to adjust and then peered into the dimness below. 

For a minute, Louise only saw the staircase, metal gleaming in the low light, but then part of it was obscured by a dark shape. 

_Clang!_

Louise felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Something was moving down there, a scraping noise between each louder sound. 

But how had it gotten there? Even the scrapped animatronics she’d been looking after lately were all restrained heavily, not to mention sealed behind sturdy metal doors 24/7. 

Unless... 

“Dave?”, she whispered into the darkness. 

The sound of scraping metal stopped. There were a few rattling clicks, the sounds of motors, and then silence. 

Louise had the distinct feeling that she shouldn’t have spoken up. 

_CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!_

“Shit!”, she gasped, scrambling to her feet. It was coming up. 

The top of the stairs still wasn’t far from her. When she reached it, she pulled herself up and shoved her keycard into the door’s scanner, bursting through it into the hallway. Louise didn’t even wait for it to shut fully before she began jogging down the hall, trying not to alarm anyone that might be in the party rooms or looking for the restrooms somewhere. Luckily, she didn’t pass anyone. 

When Louise came to a halt in the kitchen, a hand on her walkie to contact her manager and coworkers, her jaw dropped. 

The place was completely empty.


	8. Hostage

Louise felt her soul nearly leave her body. The entire room was devoid of people and their chatter. The Rockstar animatronics seemed to be inactive, but she swore she could see tiny sparks coming from them as she looked at them longer. 

That last detail sort of made sense, for a power outage. Louise knew that the robots were electrical in nature. 

What it didn’t explain was the complete absence of customers— and staff— in the main dining area. Stranger still was that the tables were clean, not a single cup or plate atop them. The floor looked as shiny as it had after it had last been mopped, with hardly a boot print to disturb the glossy sheen on the tiles. 

But that wasn’t possible, was it? Hadn’t she been here just a short while ago, amidst a bustling, noisy group of people and coworkers flitting around to attend to them? Where had Jeff even gone? Either this was an elaborate joke or she’d missed a tornado siren. 

Louise backtracked, trying to regulate her breathing as best as she could. She went back past the kitchen, which was also empty and dark. The break room was the same. 

Jeff’s office was locked, which Louise had never encountered before while the place was open. She rubbed her temples, brow furrowed. Had she somehow _dreamt_ that they’d been open? 

_It doesn’t matter_ , she thought. What she needed was to find help, or get out of here, fast. 

Louise found herself heading back down the corridor, muscles tensed to run at the first sign of danger. She couldn’t hear that horrible clanking anymore, which she wasn’t sure was a good sign. 

Her employee keycard, which she seldom used, got her past the small room which housed the stairs to the bottom floor. Past it was a small string of near-identical rooms, one of which, the second room in— was where Lefty now resided. 

Louise lingered in the emptier first room, where she’d watched over the other night. Was that a draft she was feeling? 

Something shifted nearby, a heavy grating sound echoing from everywhere around her, and she shrieked, fumbling for her phone with one hand as she leaned against the wall with the other one. 

Her phone’s light revealed what looked like the same pile of scrap metal and tangled wiring from the other night— but the mass itself was moving, metal coiling and writhing like live snakes. She could see a few shiny animatronic eyes in the pile, too, all blinking and twitching in their various dulled colors. 

Louise stared. What the hell was she looking at? 

White metal gleamed from the corner of her vision and she whirled to face it. In front of her was what looked like a deformed animatronic mask of sorts, splintered into pieces that somehow still held their ghastly shape. The thing had one piercing yellow eye-socket, the beam of which moved constantly, analyzing. Somehow, the melted metal face was peering down at her, only a tangle of wires holding it aloft.

Louise felt her breath hitch at the glimpse of what looked like sharp metal teeth lining the inside of the mask. 

_Don’t move. Don’t move_. 

“W-Well hello there!”, a shrill voice exclaimed. 

Louise screamed, dropping her phone. When she heard the metal thing shift further, she didn’t hesitate to stagger around it, heading for the dark shape of a storage shelf in the corner, the quickest form of shelter she could think of. 

“Now d-don’t be like th-that, friend— we j-just wanna play, y’know...”. 

Louise didn’t respond. She was busy trying to press herself into the very back corner, praying that the creature wouldn’t be able to reach her past the shelf. 

Marty, Jeff, anyone, please come and help me...

Suddenly, there was a buzz from her walkie, which startled her so badly that she squeaked at the sound. 

“Louise?” It was Marty’s voice. Louise felt her shoulders drop in relief. 

“I’m here”, she hissed. “What’s going on?” 

“The power’s out. I just came in to get my wallet, but then I saw your walkie missing, and I keep hearing these weird noises. Are you okay...?” 

“Sort of”, Louise murmured into her device, hoping the metal monstrosity hadn’t heard her. 

“Where are you at right now?”, Marty asked. 

“Uh—“, Louise trailed off, trying to think. “Um. It’s dark. Sorry— it’s past the stairs—“ 

Marty was saying something, but a heavy CLANK from nearby all but deafened his reply. The animatronic’s yellow eye was looking in her direction now. 

Louise chewed her lip. “What?” 

“I said to wait there. I’m gonna lure the thing that’s in there away from you, okay? I know how to do it.”

Louise didn’t question how Marty knew about the creature. “O-Okay.” 

Clicking off the walkie, Louise crouched down against the wall, heart missing a beat when she realize she couldn’t see the yellow eye anymore. 

“ _TAG!_ ”, shrieked the voice again as a cold metal hand grabbed a fistful of her hair from above. Screaming, Louise thrashed her head, clawing at the hand so violently that she managed to break free of its hold on her and sink even lower onto the floor. 

She avoided the swiping paw just in time— a bizarre noise was now emitting from the ceiling, and the creature had audibly shifted away from her and towards the source. It took only a few seconds for the massive thing to hoist itself up and into the vent, making a racket as it dragged its entire form into the metal tunnel above her. 

Louise jumped a bit when her walkie clicked. “Okay, you should be clear. It should be in the vents.” 

A feeling of pure dread enveloped her as she stood, but she didn’t linger behind the shelf for long. She hurried to the door she’d come through and held up the keycard, trying not to think too much about where she could have dropped her phone— she could definitely worry about that later. 

“Come to the kitchen”, Marty instructed from the walkie. Louise nodded to herself, pushed past the door, and began making her way there. 

Marty himself was there when she arrived, leaning unsteadily on the kitchen counter. 

She had the good heart to be concerned before the panic from before set in again, and she rushed the last few steps towards her coworker. 

“Where did it go?” 

He was shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter. We need to go, okay? It’s not safe here right now-we’ll just have to contact Jeff about that scrap robot later.” 

Louise desperately hoped she could trust him. She knew she didn’t have much of a choice otherwise. 

“I understand.” 

She was feeling a tad better as she and Marty wove between the tables on their way to the entryway doors— they were almost out of here. 

Right as Louise reached for one of the door handles, Marty let out a yell from next to her. Louise, terrified, couldn’t see what had happened in the darkness of the room. 

As she was standing, frozen, hand on the door, there was the sound of a single footstep from directly behind her. 

“There you are”, said Dave.

Louise could feel the man’s breath on her arm as she turned, shakily, to face him. 

“Wh—what are you doing out here?”, she asked, voice shaking. 

Dave let out a small chuckle. Without answering, he grabbed Louise by the shoulder with his good arm, shoving her away from the door with surprising strength for a dead man. 

Louise felt the air leave her lungs on impact with the wall and wheezed hoarsely, clutching her abdomen. Dave had let go of her now, but was still lingering in front of her. 

From nearby, Marty was speaking very quickly and frantically— it ended abruptly and with a dull thud against the floor that Louise could only assume was the weight of his body hitting it. She felt nauseous. 

“Louise”, Dave began calmly, as if he hadn’t just physically assaulted her, “I have a proposition for you.” 

His dull eyes glowed in the dark.

“—For when you wake up, that is.” 

Louise failed to dodge the swing of Dave’s arm as his fist connected with her jaw, her vision going black. 

•••

Henry was in full-panic mode. All of the screens he’d set up to track animatronic activity in Hurricane were lit up red, multiple signatures flashing on and off, moving about, all of them gathered near Freddy’s. 

He wiped his brow, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. It couldn’t be good. The computers may be able to show him where the creatures were— but not what they were doing. 

Certainly not what they were _thinking_. 

Grabbing a bag, Henry began stuffing things into it— a flashlight, a burner phone, a long-range taser he’d swiped off of a crime scene— and anything he could use to take notes with if need be. There was no telling what he’d find there. 

Of course, there wasn’t even the guarantee that he’d ever make it out of there. Henry knew full well that William was still alive, and whether he was capable of harm was greatly overshadowed by the fact that far more dangerous animatronics were in there with him. Who knew what they’d do if they managed to breach their haphazard holding cells— as seemed to be the case now? 

Henry was imagining the worst: bodies, for one thing, adults and possibly children. Hell... probably children. Those monsters were so set in their twisted programming that Henry expected nothing less than a massacre; the place was typically quite busy this early on in the week. 

But Henry didn’t have time to feel sad about it. What he needed was to get in there and dispatch the animatronics himself, no matter what horrors they’d already committed. 

No matter who was in there— himself included. He was ready to die, to be with his daughter again. 

It had to end. It all had to end. 

•••

Louise woke up to a ringing in her ears and a terrible pain on the side of her face. She spluttered as she took in a desperate breath, adrenaline shooting through her as she regained consciousness and tried to stand. 

She made it halfway there before something yanked her down— Louise felt the rough, frayed industrial rope around her wrists before she saw it. It was like the worst rug-burn she’d ever experienced, pulling the delicate skin of her arm and making her wince in pain. Slowly, she sat back down, gritting her teeth. 

“Hello?”, she croaked quietly, trying to make out her surroundings. Wherever she was, it was cold— colder than any room she’d ever been in at this restaurant, besides the walk-in freezer. 

Her only indication that it wasn’t the freezer, in fact, was the clear outline of a door right beside her— or... something like it. She squinted at it— there were no visible hinges, and a strange gap of space behind the dark object covering the doorway, like there was something leaning on the other side of it to block her in, not an actual door. 

Something creaked above Louise’s head and she jumped, jerking back against the cold wall of the room and looking up at the... 

Oh. There wasn’t a ceiling. 

Louise swallowed and peered up into the seemingly endless blackness. Where the hell was she? 

She nearly banged her head on the wall when there was a heavy knock at the doorway. Louise shuffled into a sitting position, heart pounding. “Who’s there?” 

Instead of an answer, the light around the doorway shifted as whoever was on the other side began to drag the object to the side, letting more dim light into the strange space Louise was in. 

She couldn’t make out anything at first, but when her eyes finally started to adjust, Louise shrank back— there was something standing in the doorway, hunched slightly to better fit. 

“Dave?” 

The animatronic suit clicked as Dave nodded silently, stepping closer. “How’s your head?” The man sounded nonchalant as he bent down, reaching his arm out to her, which Louise promptly scooted away from. “Don’t touch me.” 

Dave chuckled. “Snippy, are we? I’m only trying to help.” 

_Yeah, right_. Louise watched him furiously as he paced casually around the room, stopping to look up. 

“At least you haven’t been lonely.” 

“What?” 

Dave gestured to above her head. Louise looked again. 

There was something looking back. 

“Shit!”, she gasped. “What is that?!” 

Dave just laughed at her, shaking his head and making the somewhat-intact animatronic rabbit ear bob with the movement. The glaring yellow eye above her was unblinking. 

_The thing from before_ , she thought. The thing that had _attacked her before_... 

She shuddered, wondering how long in had been up there, suspended from no foothold she could make out. It looked like the mess of wires that made up its form was anchoring it to the walls like a giant metal spider. Every wire was writhing in place, constantly adjusting.

She tore her gaze away from the metal monster. “Why did you do this? I’ve been trying to help you!” 

“Which I have greatly appreciated”, said Dave, already facing her. “I’m returning the favor.” 

“Returning the—“, she broke off, clearing her throat. “What? Are you crazy?” 

Dave shrugged. “Yes. But please, won’t you hear me out, at the very least? I assure you I mean what I say.” 

Louise resisted the urge to just start screaming and scrunched her eyes shut, knowing she wouldn’t get anywhere by yelling at him. Dave was clearly not right in the head, but she supposed she couldn’t really be surprised by that, considering he was a corpse, and all. Her only possible way out of this was to try and go with it, at least for a little bit. There was nothing else to do. 

“Fine”, she sighed. “But I really don’t want that thing in here with me if I’m not going to be allowed to move”, she said, hoping her voice didn’t shake. She was trying to sound more angry than scared. If she _sounded_ scared, she’d only _feel_ more scared. 

“A reasonable request”, Dave murmured. He glanced up. “Why don’t you all come down from there for a moment?” 

Louise’s breath hitched when the creature from above giggled maniacally. “Awww, you’re no fun!” 

Despite its protests, though, the thing began moving, descending down the walls until it collapsed on the floor in a shifting, gleaming pile of wires and broken parts. A single blue-colored animatronic eye blinked at her from the mix before it was buried by more shiny coils. 

Dave stepped aside, the rabbit’s head craning with his own to watch the thing drag itself out of the doorway and out of view. 

He turned back to Louise. “Better?” 

She glared. “Say what you’re gong to say.” 

“Very well.” He moved to the middle of the room, taking another look outside before looking back at Louise. “I have an offer for you.” 

“So you said earlier”, Louise muttered. 

“I think”, continued Dave, “that you’ll be interested. It’s really quite a deal.” 

Louise clenched her fists. “ _What_ is?”, she snapped. “And why am I being held hostage?” 

“Ah, I’d forgotten”, Dave said. He stepped closer to her, grabbing one of the ropes before she could move away and severing it with the pointed end of the bone of his missing arm. Louise couldn’t help but let out a relieved sigh when the second rope was cut. 

“Now then, my offer”, Dave grunted, stepping back and standing at full height. “I’d like to offer you an opportunity at a better life.” 

“Better?”, Louise scoffed. “What, like... drugs? The accult? Hell no.” 

Dave sighed. “I didn’t _say_ any of that, did I? Just listen. I’m offering you what I’ve already attained— to extend your life. Permanently, if you’re clever about it.” 

Louise frowned. Was he serious? She didn’t want any part of whatever voodoo crap he was partaking in to keep himself alive, whether it “made you live longer” or not. There was something highly unnatural, to her, about trying to cheat death. 

This wasn’t to say that she hadn’t felt for the man at any point— clearly, he was in no comfortable situation, and whatever incident had made him that way was surely hellish in every possible way. But still— she couldn’t trust him anymore. He was still a stranger, plus the part where he’d just _knocked her unconscious_. 

Sort of a red flag. 

“I don’t want it”, she answered. “Whatever you’ve done to stay alive, I don’t want it.” 

Dave let out a sigh like the scraping of rusted metal. “Louise, you hardly understand what I’m referring to. You’re making an assumption, and an incorrect one, at that. If you’d just hear me out—“ 

“No way.” 

Somehow, without seeing his face, Louise thought Dave looked irritated. 

“ _My_ case”, he began, clearly straining to keep his voice level, “Was a fluke. A test, if you will.” He paced to one side of the chamber, running the exposed bone of his severed arm across the walls absently. “But for you, Louise, it will be different. It will be better. You’ll never have to fear death again. I promise you.” 

Louise just stared at him, wondering if the man could still feel physical sensations in that thing, or if he was just numbly trudging through existence in that godawful rabbit suit. That didn’t seem like a ‘win’ in her book. It was just _sad._

It was Louise’s turn to sigh. “Look, Dave, I, uh— appreciate your offer— but I just don’t have any interest in that. I’m sorry.” She wasn’t really sorry, but she didn’t want to risk pissing him off. 

Dave stopped pacing.

“Very well, if that’s truly how you wish things to go.” 

Louise felt herself tense immediately at his words. “I’m not gonna tell anyone. I can still help you stay hidden, or... uh...” 

“Oh, there’s no need for that”, Dave said, adjusting something with his suit’s torso. 

There was a short period of tense silence before Dave suddenly snapped back at attention, the mascot head turning to look over his shoulder. 

A horrible scraping sound followed by a heavy thump told Louise that her unwelcome companion from earlier was crawling back into the confined space. Breathing shallowly, she balled her hands into fists and stared at the doorway as the slinking shape returned, poking its head around the corner to look right at her with its ugly yellow gaze. Louise backed up against the wall, managing, with some considerable effort, to come into a crouching position to face the threat. Regrettably, she’d only just now noticed that there was still a chain around her ankle. 

Dave was saying nothing, and his head simply turned, like clockwork, as the misshapen metal creature pulled itself back into the chamber with them, settling into a haphazard pile of wires and cables. Its head was tilted up at Dave. 

“You all heard her, didn’t you?”, he said in almost a whisper. “It seems we’ll have to stick to our original plan.” 

“Wait, _what?_ ”, Louise squeaked, mentally hitting herself for sounding so childish. 

She didn’t receive an answer, anyway. Dave turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, leaving silently as the metal abomination before her began crawling forward, metal teeth gleaming dangerously as it looked around. There had to be a way out of this. 

Louise froze when the creature laughed, a nasty, metallic sound, crawling ever-closer. She tried to kick at it, but the angle was awkward, and she ended up stumbling sideways in an effort to keep balanced. She had nowhere to run. 

In a moment, the thing was right there. Before Louise could squirm away or even scream, it swung a heavy-looking ‘limb’ at her legs, uneven white-painted fingers ending in crude metal claws. Louise flinched and squeezed her eyes shut. 

But there was no pain. When she opened her eyes, Louise realized that the thing had cut through the chain that had been holding her down. 

She couldn’t fight the sudden grip on her forearm that made her gasp in fright. The creature yanked her towards itself, shuffling back as it did so in a way where Louise was forced to stumble after it, breathing rapidly. 

As it dragged her outside of the chamber, Louise tried to spot Dave nearby, but saw no one. 

What she did see, however, was a massive, dark, eerily empty room. The ceiling was so high that she wasn’t sure where it ended, and she could make out what looked like a forklift and a miniature crane spaced apart from each other, piles of crates and tools and papers lying all across the floor. 

She craned her neck to glance behind them as the creature led her away. The rest of the room looked equally empty, save for a tall storage shelf and some black garbage bags near the doorway where they’d come from. 

What was this place?


	9. Containment Breach

“That’s weird.” 

Jeff was squinting at a paper on the kitchen table when he heard his wife speak. “Hm?” 

Dolores shook her head, not looking up from her tablet. “They found more evidence about that crime scene.” 

Jeff let out a long sigh, glancing up. “The one outside the restaurant?” 

“The very same.” 

He frowned. He didn’t want to hear that— no one did, really. The cops hadn’t even told him anything about that day, other than that it ‘most likely’ didn’t have anything to do with Dennis. 

Which, of course, he’d been skeptical of. Dennis had last been seen at work, and now they’d found— something— there... and it _wasn’t_ his dead body? It was a pretty hefty coincidence. 

But luckily, Jeff had been in contact with a close friend of Dennis’s since the man’s disappearance. The man’s name was Henry, as he’d introduced himself over the phone, and he had seemed almost certain that Dennis had simply lost his cell phone again, which he often did. He hadn’t even seemed worried about Dennis’s car, or the state it had been left in. Jeff had naturally been distraught over this, but Henry had seemed quite casual, as if it was typical of Dennis not to care much about incidents like that. 

Still, though. It had rubbed Jeff the wrong way that they hadn’t found so much as a drop of blood to indicate he’d been in an accident, let alone a single hair to lead the police to his possible whereabouts. Henry’s calm confidence was certainly reassuring (and believable, from the easy way he spoke), but Jeff wouldn’t relax until his colleague was found. 

It was a good thing he’d decided on closing for today. He definitely needed this time to rest and reflect— not to mention, he was about three stacks of paperwork away from earning the right to go to bed. 

Dolores was walking over to him now, slippers scuffing the tile of the kitchen floor. “You can see for yourself, dear, I’m done reading it.” 

Jeff murmured a thanks and accepted the paper, shaking it out until he could clearly see the page in its entirety, scanning through the printed text. 

He raised his eyebrows. 

He’d stopped on a sentence after seeing the words ‘animal attack’; apparently, the police had finally disclosed the nature of the crime scene at Freddy’s: it had, in fact, been a dead body. 

Ignoring the pickup of his heart rate, Jeff read further, trying to take in the information without panicking unnecessarily. This wasn’t about Dennis. It wouldn’t make sense. Right? 

And indeed, the article had no mention of the identity of the body other than the fact that the victim had been an adult. The body had not, apparently, possessed enough flesh on its face and hands to indicate who the victim had been, a detail that made Jeff shudder. Even the _teeth_ had been missing. 

His wife’s non-reaction was typical of her; she was a former doctor, but he didn’t have much of a stomach for such grisly events. After finding no further relevant information, Jeff folded the paper in half and set it aside, rubbing the side of his head. 

As much of a cruddy thing it was, Jeff was more concerned with his restaurant more than anything. On one hand, there was its (and his) reputation; bad media could deter customers, customers he so desperately needed to fund his business and support himself and his wife. Dolores was retiring in the next couple of months, so they’d have to rely on him for awhile. 

And it wasn’t just about the money, either. Jeff was proud of his establishment. He’d overcome so many hurdles, prevented so many disasters, and practically reinvented the franchise with his strict standards for safety and quality control, an aspect that had seemed to be absent from many of the previous Freddy’s locations. He’d broken the chain of bad luck. 

Well, so far, anyway. 

With a grunt, Jeff stood from the table, eyeing the telephone on the wall nearby. He needed to provide some sort of positive foil to this disturbing news, or else he’d risk losing valuable business. 

His task, however, was to contact the local sheriff’s department for more details on the case, or any sort of confirmation that whatever animal had mauled the poor man was not at large around Freddy’s. He didn’t want to hear of any more tragedy, whether it had been due to his own error or not. 

•••

Louise wasn’t sure if she was in shock or just strangely calm as she kept pace with the hulking metal creature tugging her down a long corridor. She knew, of course, that she needed to escape from it, but she wasn’t about to try and bolt without knowing anything about her surroundings. Was she near Freddy’s? Was she far from Freddy’s? 

Was she... _in_ Freddy’s? 

She chewed her lip as she jogged. It was impossible to tell at this stage. The place she’d awoken in was massive, dark, and freezing cold, a twisting maze of uniform grey tunnels and flickering fluorescent lights. It felt like what she imagined a federal prison to look like, but she wasn’t foolish enough to assume that this was a government facility. 

For starters, she hadn’t seen a single human being since she’d been down here, and no, she was _not_ counting Dave. While the place didn’t seem abandoned, per sé, it felt like it was... _waiting_ for something. 

There had to be a purpose for all of this. 

After what felt like an hour of shambling around, the creature reached the end of a dim hallway, stopping in front of an open doorway briefly before lurching into it, nearly knocking Louise flat on her face in her struggle to stay standing. She ran to catch up, screeching to a halt when she realized the thing had let go of her arm. 

Louise observed the room they were in. It wasn’t very large, but the walls were covered in switches, buttons, and levers, all different colors and sizes. Grids and interfaces lined the edges of the room as well, some glowing faintly, like cell phone screens, some simply emitting solid light, red or white or blinking yellow. 

“Where are we?”, Louise asked her captor, mostly talking to herself. 

“W-w-well”, sang the creature, making her jump, “We’re in the _inf-f-fusion_ room, of course!” 

“Huh?”, she asked. 

Something hissed loudly behind her and Louise screamed, clapping a hand over her mouth when she discovered that it had been the room’s metal doors closing behind her. 

She began to feel a bit sick with fear. “Why did you bring me here?” 

Instead of answering, the creature pulled itself to a corner of the room, raising a disjointed limb to hover over a serious of buttons on a grid. 

Then, it pushed several of them at once. 

From the center of the far wall, a large rectangle lit up around its edges, and the wall itself opened up to reveal a long, black metal slab that soon became a horizontal surface. 

Nervously, Louise stepped back, looking at the door. Was there a way to open it from the inside? 

Suddenly, the shrill whine of an intercom echoed in the room. “Have we found our way the infusion room yet, Louise?” 

She curled her lip at the smug sound of Dave’s voice. “What are you even _doing_?”

“Freddy, Foxy, Ballora. Please secure our guest.” 

“Wha—“ 

Too late, Louise saw that the decrepit scrap heap had moved to her end of the room. It ran at her, gripping her arms again as she yelled and kicked to no avail. 

“Now, Louise, it’s best you settle down and be still for this”, came Dave’s voice from the ceiling. 

“Screw you!” 

The sound of the man’s raspy laughing was partially drowned out by the whine of the room itself as some sort of robotic arm emerged from the wall where the rectangle had just been. Louise, mind flashing back to being a terrified six-year-old at the dentist’s office, panicked, flailing and screaming as the creature hurled her onto the black rectangle. 

“Get off! Stop it!”, she yelled, trying to aim for the thing’s head, but it was quick to dodge her, forcing her body into a prone position before fastening a few straps over her shoulders, waist, and calves. Louise felt her chest flutter and her vision blur; this felt unreal, like a terrible nightmare. The creature slithered off of the table and back onto the floor, leaving her to jerk around in her new prison. 

A beeping sound, long and low, started from the panel in the wall as the metal arm began to straighten out, seeming to reach for her. 

Louise thrashed around again before stopping to catch her breath. If she was going to be killed, she’d rather have been shot, or something, not whatever this was supposed to be. Her insides churned at the thought of what that sharp-edged metal would do to her flesh and organs. 

Would she feel it when it killed her, however it went about it, or would she pass out beforehand? Why was she being killed like this? It seemed excessive. Louise smiled bitterly at the absurdity of it all. She’d never know the full truth of it, she imagined, just like how she wouldn’t know much of anything, anymore, in a matter of time. She felt her breathing slow down to a regular pace as she stopped straining her limbs and looked right at the metal arm. 

“Don’t be frightened, Louise”, said Dave. She’d almost forgotten he was there— or, his voice was, at least. 

She scoffed. “Guess it’s not gonna do me much good.” 

“You’re right”, Dave replied. “It won’t. I am pleased you’ve changed your mind.” 

Louise almost laughed at that; it wasn’t even a little bit true. But it didn’t really matter what she said to Dave. He clearly wasn’t going to cancel whatever master plan he had because she asked nicely. 

Then, as she was about to reply, Louise spotted something on the nearby wall: a loose clump of wires. It was pinned to the grid the creature had been using, like it had fallen away from the rest of the beast while it had been pushing buttons. 

And it was quite close to where her hand was sticking out. 

“I guess I have”, she said. “Maybe you’re right.” 

“I _am_ right. You’ll see that I’m right.” 

Louise shifted on the table, adjusting her arm so that she could extend it fully. “I hope so. How long will this take, Dave? What does it entail? I’m curious.” As she talked, she shifted more, aware of the state of the creature at the corner of her vision, who seemed fixated on the loudspeaker and not her for the time being. 

“Ah, well, it’s quite an interesting phenomenon”, Dave said, sounding pleasantly surprised to be elaborating further. “You will have your very life-force set in stone, untouchable, no matter what ails your body.” 

“How so?”, said Louise, gritting her teeth as she stretched her hand. Just a little closer and she’d be able to grab the wires, which were sparking at the ends. 

Dave continued talking over the intercom, sounding boastful and excited as he went into further detail about ‘remnants’, and ‘the fortitude of the soul’. Louise only half-listened, wondering absently if the man really did have faith in whatever this invention of his was allegedly doing. Not as if she cared. 

Just as Louise was about to brush the exposed wire, she noticed Dave had paused a little longer than usual. 

She eyed the robotic arm. “Are you, uh— starting it?” 

Silence. Louise’s eyes were wide with terror. Had he realized she’d been stalling him for time? 

“Momentarily”, was his answer. The metal arm had not yet moved. “I believe I’ve explained how it works in every aspect now. Do you understand it?” 

“Uh... yes. Well. Sort of. Mostly.” She was a quarter of an inch away from touching the sparking wires now, heart racing in her chest. Would she be able to let go when it shocked her? 

“Some is better than none”, said Dave. “Are you ready to begin?” 

Louise’s stomach dropped. She knew she couldn’t audibly hesitate. 

“I’m ready.” 

“Excellent.” 

The beeping started up again, and the metal arm hooked over her, extending further from the wall in a slow, horrible approach that made her face pale. She was flailing her hand at the wires, pulling against the straps with every movement, she didn’t dare glance at the arm— 

CRACK! 

Louise felt a force overtake her nervous system as her fingers made contact with the ends of the wires. At the same time, everything in the room lit up at once in a flare of electricity, sending little sparks across every surface, including the metal arm. 

Air rushed into her lungs as the current left her at last and the straps snapped open. She rolled off of the table just as the entire slab jerked, slamming back into the wall at a force which would have crushed her in seconds. 

“ _WHAT IS GOING ON?!_ ”, roared Dave from the now-crackling loudspeakers. “GET THIS UNDER CONTROL!” 

Louise was already at the door, which had shot halfway up from the floor when the room had short-circuited. She jumped under it without stopping, scrambling to her feet as she skidded into the corridor she’d come through earlier. 

Dave’s furious yelling followed her into the hall from the overhead speakers there. “DON’T YOU DARE LEAVE THAT ROOM!” 

Louise smirked as she picked up speed, glad that she recalled at least a few of the turns they’d taken coming through here earlier. 

“DO YOU HEAR ME?!” , Dave boomed again. “Damn you—“ 

She didn’t have time to think about his anger as she continued her sprint down the hall, cursing under her breath when she took a turn that she wasn’t entirely certain about. She kept moving. 

Strangely, Louise didn’t hear the metal creature pursuing her as she ran, not even a hint that it might have crawled into an air vent or anything similar. She was quite plainly alone— for now. 

Louise nearly giggled out of joy when she saw a room with an enclosed set of stairs. She knew this room; it was part of the underground factory at Freddy’s. She finally knew where she was. 

But she wasn’t about to let her guard down. As she slowed her pace, Louise scanned the area, looking for the darkest corners. She needed to hide, fast. 

Cramming herself behind a pile of dusty old crates, Louise tried to breathe more quietly, her lungs burning. She wasn’t comfortable, but she held still anyway, straining her ears for any sign of a pursuer. 

Minutes passed, all filled with near-complete silence save for the subtle hum of the overhead lights. 

Louise was trying to ignore the cramp forming in her calf when there was the faintest noise— a light, metallic echo. She stopped breathing momentarily. 

_Clank_. There it was again. It wasn’t a heavy sound, like what she’d heard from the bottom of the stairs earlier; this was almost imperceptible, distant. 

But it _wasn’t_ distant. 

It was close, and getting more so by the second, as Louise put together from how it echoed daintily in the corridor she’d just come from. It wasn’t a familiar sound at all, and as it approached, Louise began to notice the continuation of each step, how it didn’t clomp down like something very heavy might. 

And then it stopped altogether. 

Louise didn’t dare move or crane her neck to try and peek over the pile of crates. Her self-preservation instinct was far stronger than her curiosity, despite her strange urge to come out of hiding and investigate. She wasn’t about to risk her safety for a little satisfaction. 

Time seemed to stop as Louise waited for something, anything, to change, for the noise to start again, for Dave or that scrap-heap creature to come around the corner in search of her, for the police to come and retrieve her. 

Why wasn’t she hearing Dave over the intercom anymore? Had he left it to come and find her? Why hadn’t she heard _him_ shambling around, then? 

Surely this new sound hadn’t been him; it had sounded nothing like his thumping, uneven footsteps. 

Louise barely contained a yelp of surprise when one of the crates she was behind started moving, seemingly on its own. Before she could think of a way out, she saw what was moving it: a hand. 

“Louise?” It was a familiar voice, albeit hushed. Louise swallowed hard and rose slightly to see who it was. 

“Sarah? What are you doing here?”, she hissed. “How did you even _get_ here?” 

Sarah shook her head. “The lights went out upstairs and I couldn’t find anyone, or leave. I heard something down here and thought it might be Jeff or someone else.” She paused, looking around warily. “Are we supposed to be down here?” 

Louise stared. It was a miracle her coworker had managed to come here without incident, but how had she not been spotted? And damn, did she envy Sarah’s composure, although she was fairly certain Sarah hadn’t been kidnapped like she had. 

“I dunno, but we need to find a way out. Why couldn’t you leave upstairs?”, Louise asked, standing up slowly to relieve the soreness in her legs. 

Sarah frowned. “Doors were jammed. I have a set of keys like everyone else, but none would work.” 

She offered a hand for Louise to lean on, but Louise shook her head, smiling gratefully. “I’m okay. Let’s try and head back up, I guess.” 

Luckily for the both of them, the stairs to the restaurant floor were directly next to Louise’s hiding spot. This was the only room of this underground level she’d actually ever been in, so she knew this right away, indicating to her coworker where the door was since it was partially hidden by shadow. 

The staircase itself, as usual, was dark and cold after they’d both gone through the narrow doorway. Louise started up the stairs, scrutinizing every flimsy-looking metal step before she put her full weight on it. 

She tried not to think about the last time she’d been here, but it was so fresh— and alarming. What had been crawling up after her? She’d never actually seen it. 

Glancing up, she was relieved to see no large silhouette blocking the dim light from above. Whatever it was had long gone. 

“What is it?”, asked Sarah from behind her. 

“Just checking”, said Louise, returning her gaze to the set of stairs ahead of them. “There was something down here a little while ago, when the power went out.” Louise blinked as she finished her sentence. “Hey, by the way, where were you when that happened? I couldn’t find anyone either.” 

“Bathroom”, said Sarah. “I thought the power had only gone out _there_ , so I didn’t really worry about it until I got out. Guess I should have, huh?” 

“Yeah.” 

The pair reached the top without another word. Louise waited for her coworker to catch up before stepping up onto the floor, ready to push the door in front of her open and re-enter the restaurant. 

“Where does that go?” 

Louise turned around, eyes widening when she saw what Sarah was talking about. The heavy metal door to the smaller storage rooms was wide open, revealing a dark space inside. 

She didn’t move. “Uh, that’s usually closed. It’s to storage, and I think it leads to that underground level too, now that I think of it.” She didn’t mention that the very next room was where she’d cowered behind a shelf as a creepy, demented-sounding pile of metal had tried to grab her. 

Sarah nodded. “Maybe it leads to the surface?” She stepped around Louise and through the door, much to Louise’s horror. 

“Wait!”, she hissed, stumbling in after her. “It might not be safe—“ 

Before either of them could say anything else, there was a loud crash from somewhere else in the building. 

They took one look at each other and shared a thought: Hide. Louise silently beckoned her to come and hide behind the shelf she’d ducked under just a short while ago, waiting for Sarah to settle into place next to her before she grew still, trying to listen for more movement. 

•••

Henry had found the doors jammed when he arrived. His spare keys didn’t work, and neither did juggling the handles, so he’d stepped back, braced himself for joint aches afterward, and slammed into the door, nearly falling forward along with it when he busted it off of its hinges. 

He huffed, surprised he still had that kind of strength, and then stepped over the fallen door into the restaurant. 

The whole place was dark and silent. Henry immediately noticed that the stage was empty, devoid of animatronics, and strode over to the door to the backstage room, readying his taser in case anything decided to go wrong in there. 

Fortunately, the backstage door yielded to one of his keys and he entered, stepping quietly down the small set of stairs until he could see the entirety of the space. He flicked on his flashlight. 

Nothing was amiss. 

Some of the Rockstar animatronics and Funtime Chica were inactive in their respective corners, and Rockstar Bonnie was a bit further back, in an unnecessarily elaborate room of his own, just as dormant as the other members of the band. Henry kept a watchful eye on all of them as he left, still on edge. 

He had to check for bodies now. 

In the main dining area, where he’d just passed through, tables were empty and clean, not a single napkin out of place, not a single chair askew. Henry still made sure to examine underneath them, relieved when he found nothing and no one. 

However, upon a closer look near the doors, Henry found what looked like loose change and a girl’s hair tie strewn across the floor. Had someone spilled the contents of their change purse in a clumsy moment, or had this been the result of something more sinister? He couldn’t tell at first glance.

But nearby, separate from the spilled coins, Henry found something slightly more alarming: a small smear of blood on the corner of a tablecloth. He bent down and shone the light over it. 

The smudge wasn’t big, but it was enough to be visible. 

Of course, there was always the possibility that some kid had been running around and knocked into the corner— but then there would be no way that the kid hadn’t caused a fuss, and if they’d caused a fuss, the tablecloth would have been removed and bleached. 

This cloth, though it had probably been wiped down recently, didn’t look like it had been deep-cleaned in its entire existence. 

No. This smear hadn’t been some kid horsing around. Henry stood up, scanning the floor for anything else that might lead him to more evidence, but he saw nothing more as he stepped around the tables again, squinting. 

Henry wrung out his hands, anxious. He had to stop stalling. After all, he hadn’t come here to play it safe. If only he had one of William’s illusion discs, then perhaps he could see what was _really_ here— if anything was not as it seemed. He didn’t doubt that something was off. 

Henry’s heart skipped a beat when he rounded a corner, the final door on his right visible— the way down to Afton’s old factory, as well as a couple of storage rooms he assumed the owner was using to store old junk. 

His daughter had to be somewhere amongst it. 

He shakily procured his keys, walking up to the door and shuddering slightly at the faint draft when he unlocked it and pushed it open. 

Before him, beneath a large, square glass panel built into the floor, were the stairs to the bottom level, a dark, narrow space that got colder the lower you went. 

Henry stepped forward, ready to embark on this new journey, but paused when he heard something at the very back of his awareness, so small and meek that he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it or not. It had sounded sweet, innocent. Familiar. 

The man stepped away from the stairs, went to the next door, and stepped through without a second thought. It was already open. 

There was nothing in the first room, but it was in shambles. Bits of sharp-looking scrap metal littered the floor, and a large, broken, rusted metal chain sat coiled around a water pipe— which had been broken nearly in two. He almost laughed; the owner really hadn’t known much about what he was dealing with, had he? 

Stepping over the mess, Henry fumbled with his keys momentarily before pushing open another door, opening onto yet another small, dark room. 

His flashlight darted around the room, landing on a few old, moldy boxes, a low wooden table and chair, and, finally, something black and shiny propped up against the back wall. 

He lowered the light. “Charlotte?” 

Slumped against the far wall was a massive, dormant animatronic bear, decorated with a star, top hat, and colorful highlights. It wasn’t quite Freddy— just slightly different, as no Freddy Henry had ever made (or seen made) had ever been like this mismatched creature. 

But he loved it all the same. 

He loved it because it held his daughter. 

“Charlotte”, Henry whispered again, crouching down. He could feel tears in his eyes already just looking at the sleeping bear. “It’s me. It’s Dad.” 

While the bear didn’t move, Henry felt warm all of a sudden, like he’d just gotten off the phone with an old friend. The feeling filled his chest and made the edges of his mouth quirk up in his first genuine smile in months. 

Standing back up, Henry wiped his eyes. There was still hope here; Charlie wasn’t gone forever just yet. He would still get the chance to say goodbye, but then again, he would be seeing her soon after, wouldn’t he? 

Oh well. No harm in politeness. Especially not when it came to his daughter. 

But he couldn’t daydream here forever, unfortunately. He needed to orchestrate a foolproof, step-by-step plan, with plenty of backup ideas, just in case. No way was he risking having a repeat of last time— not when he’d waited for so long for a second chance at this. 

Henry flicked on his flashlight again as he glanced towards the door he’d come from, eyes wandering absently. “I’ll be back to let you out of here, Charlie. I’m going to let _all_ of you out. You’ll be free.” 

As he looked at the opposite end of the room, Henry made a face. 

Was that next door... open a crack? 

“Liar.” 

Henry was too late with his taser as a heavy metal object slammed into him, knocking him back against the table. 

He felt his lungs empty themselves of air, gasping like a fish and writhing at the sheer agony in his back and spine— the hard edge of the table had hit him squarely in the center of his back. 

A booming footstep. A distorted silhouette. 

“I bet you thought you’d just get away with pulling that little trick on us awhile back, huh?” It was Elizabeth— no— Baby. Henry couldn’t catch his breath to respond. 

Baby took another step, gears creaking and whining with each movement of her massive form, which looked drastically different from the Circus Baby Henry had remembered so vividly. Henry’s flashlight had fallen onto the ground, but it still illuminated her lower half, and the ‘sleeping’ form of Lefty behind her. 

Henry was panting now, fairly certain that he might severely damage his nerves if he dared to move from his position on the floor. He could feel his legs, but he definitely didn’t like the electric jolts of pain in his spine. He settled for a coughing fit and banging the back of his head against the table. 

“Oh, you _poor_ thing”, sneered Baby. “Haven’t you got anything to say to me? You could start with an apology.” 

Henry was still reeling. His bones were throbbing with pain as the animatronic stared him down with a piercing green stare, face in a perpetual, demented sort of grin. 

“You know, before I rip your head off”, Baby continued. “Although, I could always do that one first, if you‘d like...” 

Henry cleared his throat painfully. “Eliz—abeth—“

Immediately, several more gears clicked within Baby as she craned her neck to the side, stomping up to a near-empty storage shelf and swinging one of her arms into it without another word. The wood shattered within milliseconds with a deafening crack. 

Henry flinched, holding his tongue. He didn’t want to risk provoking another attack. And definitely not one that might hurt him further. 

Baby hadn’t moved. “I know you. Do you really know me?” 

“Of course”, Henry paused to cough, “—Of course I do. I helped make you.” 

The animatronic turned back to face him. “And for that, I will always be thankful.” Henry heard something on her right arm snap shut. “But then you betrayed me.” 

He shook his head. “I didn’t betray you, Elizabeth. I’m trying to help you. If you’d only consider—“ 

“NO!”, screeched Baby, swinging her arm, which Henry could see was equipped with a deadly-looking claw, right over his head, crushing the table behind him only inches away. 

He gasped for breath, blinking in the dark. She hadn’t hit his head. 

Baby retracted her arm again, seemingly calmer. “ _No._ You lied to us. You promised us fulfillment and you trapped us here.” 

Henry could only stare helplessly into Baby’s intense green eyes as she took a step closer to him, looming. 

“And my name isn’t Elizabeth. It’s Circus Baby. You and Daddy came up with it, don’t you remember?” 

Henry shuddered to think that Baby could be so affectionate towards his former partner— that murderous scumbag. But of course, she still wasn’t human, not even with Elizabeth Afton along for the ride. He knew that the animatronics’ sense of morality was often skewed or even nonexistent. After all, they’d been designed to entertain, not to philosophize. 

Baby was still staring intensely down at him. “Anyway, none of that matters, does it? You tried to get in our way, and for that, you’ll have to pay with your life.” 

She drew back a third time, opening the horrible claw all the way as Henry looked on in terror and frustration. He glanced over one last time to the black bear slumped behind his attacker. 

Lefty’s eyes were open now, one iris missing to show the bright white pupil underneath. Its plastic face was turned towards Henry. 

“I’m sorry”, he whispered to it, and Baby swung her arm down.


End file.
